Social Engineering, Mind Control and The Art of Manipulation

[zenithSmil3]

He doesn't like it. End of story... (sorry if that sounded a bit too abrupt ^^)

[godofcereal]

Have you ever had your acount stolen just after talking to someone on that site? Well if you have then you may want to ask why? More than likly you are too open for attacks. It could be that my sense of security is too high to trust anyone/most people, with any personal info or information that may give away my password.

Nice rant...but it didn't answer the question. What is *your* definition of "social engineering"?

I was going to edit that but I was in school writing that.
My definition of it is:
Attacker: hello, how are you? my name is john.
Victim: hi john, im kate. im good and you?
Attacker: hi Kate, im good. i was wondering if I could ask you some questions for a survey?
Victim: sure go ahead.
Attacker: ok cool, whats you full name?
Victim: kate smith.
Attacker: date of birth?
Victim:25.06.82.
Attacker: where do you live?
Victim: california.
Attacker: favorite band?
Victim: nirvana.
Attacker: favorite number?
Victim: 24.
Attacker: favorite pet?
Victim: my dog benjy.
Attacker: email so I can send you the results?
Victim: kate@fake.com
Attacker: thanks very much for your time, i will be in contact with you soon, bye.
Victim: no problem.

Can you guess her password from this? You have enough info to do it.

[aNewHobby4me]

He doesn't like it. End of story... (sorry if that sounded a bit too abrupt ^^)

His stance on the subject (however defined) was never in question

Moving on...

I don't know if you've ever seen The Anderson Tapes, but the title character had his on interesting spin on the exquisite art of social engineering:

What's advertising but a legalized con game? And what the hell's marriage? Extortion, prostitution, soliciting with a government stamp on it. And what the hell's your stock market? A fixed horse race. Some business guy steals a bank, he's a big success story. Face in all the magazines. Some other guy steals the magazine and he's busted.

Quite the philosopher, isn't he?

[Cyber_Specter]

Now thank you for answering the call of this post as with all the ranting people forgot that i made the thread to discuss books and texts on the TITLE of the THREAD!

Back To Topic.

here is another suited for our needs not just for passwords but for life

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Manipulation- ... 0385270070
Art of Manipulation

-- Tue May 26, 2009 1:16 am --

Also Lets remember that SE is, like we have all said needed in daily life.
we use it everyday. As for those who believe you are just born good at this you are both wrong and right, but mostly wrong

The prerequisites for Social Engineering, mind control and manipulation are three fold:

1. you need general intelligence or at least a generous helping of common sense

2. you need a vast understanding of the human mind, condition, and nature

3. You need very basic skills like speech, debate, and And attention to detail.

As Intelligence and charisma are the only things you are just born with, we could all stand to read a little on the subject, of 2 and 3.

[Etelerix]

Social engineering is a useful tool today (see my post in comments and suggestions) and is almost as hard to understand as many of the programming languages we teach here. It is a hard read.

But once again it is useful so I would like someone to post some places to find books on the subjects of the title of this post.
I have searched but not deeply and the only one i can recommend as a really good read is Mind control: The Ancient art of Psychological Warfare.

http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Control-Anci ... 973&sr=8-1
shown here.

Lets learn something new.

You want somewhere to look, just look at your television. The media is full of psychological warfare, reverse/back talk, and other social engineering tools and methods. They've got everyone by the balls and aren't letting go. It's a form of conditioning the public.

This link is interesting too, see if you can see the similarities between the monkeys and us:
http://paws.kettering.edu/~jhuggins/humor/banana.html