BackTrack 4: Assuring Security by Penetration Testing

Summary

In this chapter we have discussed the common use of social engineering in various aspects of life. Penetration testers may incur situations where they have to apply social engineering tactics to acquire sensitive information from their targets. It is human nature which is vulnerable to specific deception techniques. For the best view of social engineering skills we have presented the basic set of elements (communication, environment, knowledge, and frame control) which together construct the model of human psychology. These psychological principles in turn help the social engineer to adapt and extract the attack process (intelligence gathering, identifying vulnerable points, planning the attack, and execution) and methods (impersonation, ...