Gray Hat Hacking The Ethical Hackers Handbook, 3rd Edition, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 4Social Engineering Attacks

Social engineering is a way to get someone to do something they wouldn’t normally do for you, such as give you a private telephone number or internal confidential information, by creating a false trust relationship with them. It’s no different from a common confidence game, also known as a “con,” played by criminals the world over every day. You could even go as far as to say that the Greek’s Trojan horse was an early act of social engineering. That it successfully put the Greek army inside the city of Troy in mere hours after ten years of siege had failed is worth noting. The Greeks were able to decisively defeat the Trojans in one evening once inside the city wall, a theme often repeated on the digital ...