Social Engineering, 2nd Edition

4Becoming Anyone You Want to Be

Everything you can imagine is real.

—PABLO PICASSO

If I could, I would have this chapter open with the Mission: Impossible theme song, but sadly we haven't figured out how to embed music into the pages of a book. But at least I have you thinking about that catchy tune, which is fitting for this chapter.

Becoming anyone you want be—which in social engineering is called pretexting—sounds super sexy. Some people define pretexting using words like lie, falsehoods, and other negative terms. However, I like to define pretexting in more general terms. The way I explain it in The Social Engineering Framework on my company's website (www.social-engineer.org/framework/influencing-others/pretexting) is this:

Pretexting is defined as the practice of presenting oneself as someone else in order to obtain private information. It is more than just creating a lie; in some cases it can be creating a whole new identity and then using that identity to manipulate the receipt of information. Pretexting can also be used to impersonate people in certain jobs and roles that they never themselves have done. Pretexting is also not a one-size-fits-all solution. A social engineer will have to develop many different pretexts over their career. All of them will have one thing in common: research.

In one job, I had to break into seven different warehouses, and I decided to pose as a fire extinguisher inspector. In another job, we had to gain entry to the C Suite and the ...