Social Engineering, 2nd Edition

7Building Your Artwork

Art and science have their meeting point in method.

—EARL EDWARD GEORGE BULWER-LYTTON

I decided to revert, momentarily, back to the art theme of my first book, Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking (Wiley, 2011), to clearly define why this chapter is so important. After you model your communications plan, build your pretext, master rapport and influence techniques, and are ready to go, you need to be able to put it all into action. That is where art meets the science of framing and elicitation.

As Earl Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the 18th-century British politician and novelist, says, the method is where art and science meet and even cross over each other. This chapter discusses how, as a professional social engineer, you can artfully learn how to use elicitation and framing with scientifically accurate precision.

When I first started working in a kitchen, the head chef (my boss), handed me a bag of celery and said, “Julienne this bag.” Being very new at that job, I had no clue what he meant. After only a few seconds, which seemed like an eternity to me, he said, “You have no clue what I am talking about, do you?”

I gave one nod, and within 60 seconds, the chef had the bag opened and a pile of celery that looked just like Figure 7-1.

Figure 7-1 Perfectly julienned celery

“Ah, thin-sliced into strips,” I said as if I was the smartest man ...