Social Engineering in IT Security: Tools, Tactics, and Techniques

7	Executing the Social Engineering Test

The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!

—Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson, Adventure of the Abbey Grange, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

At this point, you have done the research and reconnaissance and created a scenario, now it’s time to execute your plan. Performing a social engineering test is both stressful and fun and will get your adrenaline pumping—to varying levels depending on the type of test.

Executing an email or phishing test is straightforward and usually the least stressful of any kind of social engineering test. You send the email and then wait for an agreed-upon period of time for responses to flow in, whether the response is a return email, inadvertently running some program ...