My basics behind Social Engineering (maybe lame)

[bigfish]

1. offer them something they wont>>
example: ability to hack peoples computers

2. disguse wat u want, as something they want>>
example: hacking there pc, ip adress as a means to securly transfer a illegal program...

3. try to sound smart>>
example: I need ur ip adress so i can open a ssh tunnel to ur pc to send the hacking program i use, go to cmd and type ######... (ok bad example but it worked)

4. hope there stupid enough...
example: "hey it came up with 3 different ones?" "oh just type them all.. oh wait ur firewall appears to be blocking the file" "oh wait a second i'll disable it"

just a simple way i used to hack a randoms pc, and it worked

[AtlasDark]

Best method:

1) Know what you're talking about.

[bigfish]

Hey it worked

[godofcereal]

What would you be offering them?

[bigfish]

An illegal program for hacking pc's

[Monica]

Anybody can use Social Engineering. In fact, it happens naturally in real life. However, SE online can be a bit different, so you all should do more research. This topic is not impressing me.

[Heath Winchester]

I seriously believe that Social Engineering in the real world and using it online are completely different ball games.

Like Monica said, Social Engineering is something that everyone does naturally. Whether they're good at it or not depends on natural talents and how much you've studied people and their reactions. In the end that's what it's all about. How people react towards you and what you say. But this is really more relevant to the real world than the internet.

On the internet, it is much harder to study people's reactions for obvious reasons. Someone can easily lie to you and you have no way of knowing whether or not they're telling the truth. There's no facial expressions, no tells, no emotions you can play off of. It's usually only text. Plain boring text that is hiding something much deeper.

But in a way this can also make it much easier to manipulate a person who isn't paying attention. It also requires no acting skills on your part. Just the ability to type bullshit at the right time. Say if you're using your talent to try and recover a guys email address so you can get into his AOL account and steal emails that he's been sending to some crazy corporate leader who wants to kill of all the whales in the world with a pickaxe. Something like that. Anyway, to do this all you really have to do is pretend to be his friend without ever having to actually see him or put on a front. And if he asks you a tough question you've got Google right there at your side. It just requires that you're smart enough to type out the right thing. No acting, no pretending, no sexual favors. It's much easier I think. Hell, if I wanted too I could go try and befriend some random person right now. I could change up my myspace profile totally editing who I am and what I do to suit there needs. Then just talk to him about his problems over AIM or whatever and in a few months I've got them eating out of my hand. I have done this before by the way.

In the end, Social Engineering is nothing more than observation and acting on what you've observed and a person's reactions. Sherlock Holmes would have been a brilliant Social Engineer despite his distaste for the mundane society he lived in. Actors make great Social Engineers. Good Poker players are brilliant at manipulating people. Lawyers, Detectives, and even salesman all make good Social Engineers. At least if they're good at their job they will. And girls tend to be better at it than guys I've seen. Girls have more tact than many men do.

Really there is no way I can define exactly what you have to do in Social Engineering. But I can tell you that what I said above holds true. But it is unique to every situation.

[Perckypick]

Heath, don't forget comedians in your list of good SE's. In my opinion they are some of the greatest. Most comedians don't go out with a set script, they just know a long line of jokes, and they gauge what the audience is like, then decide the skit based on that. They often try to "prod" the audience, to see just how far they could go. A good example of this is when I went to a small local 1 man comedy show, it lasted about 3 hours and had about 300 people. Anyways, his jokes got slowly more politically correct, until he finally made a joke about Iraq. Keep in mind, even though I live in a VERY liberal city, it was the year 2002, and 9/11 was still fresh in peoples minds. Even though some found it funny, almost no one laughed and there was a very akward silence.

It seemed like he had made a huge mistake, and was screwed. But the amazing thing was, he actually came back from it. He took 2 giant leaps back in his prodding, after seeing his mistake. Instead of just giving up, or doing a half assed job, he still thought he could win the people back, and he did. By the end of the show, even the angriest people thought he was great!


Morals of the story:

1. Some comedians are really good at SE

2. Even if you make a mistake, some really semi-genious quick thinking can still get you back on track. It will definitely make things harder, but it's still possible. The human mind does have a "forgive & forget" mechanism in it, so you need to exploit that as much as possible in these situations.



Keep in mind I really don't know a damn thing about SE, however I have read some online articles and looked at all the threads here, so I guess I'm not completely stupid about it.

[Heath Winchester]

You are indeed correct. I think I just absent mindedly lumped them in there with Actors. I have an article about this that I have yet to submit. I'm too lazy to type it out but perhaps I will do so today.

[Arhk]

This dude has spelling errors all over his post can someone translate....?
~ Social Engineering didn't know there was a word for how I get money out of my mom (or how I get extensions on my projects from my teachers) ....
~ To do a little speculation Social Engineering e.g manipulating people (I hope I haven't over simplified) is well very easy for us who process thought a certain way I think hackers *not simple programmers who lack interest in the most intricate details of their environment whom could be compared to no more than hobbyist in a dead end job*, but I believe we posses (I use the term "we" to group us "hackers" together because of the suggested idea we have a similar way of thought) this ability innately which is why the movies always show a guy talking to a non hacker getting compromising information from them. Even the most anti-social of our kind know how to put on a charming act when seen as needed.... It's as if every word were scripted & scrutinized before said.
~ You can tell whom were born with the skills for this craft they know all the right things to say (most of the time) I mean after all as a hacker you're an intense thinker that means you as I have, have scrutinized social relations enough you've obtained near mastery simply from observing.