Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking

9.7. Concluding Remarks

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

—ANTON CHEKHOV

The information that I provide in this book is not light-hearted. Much of the information shows serious vulnerabilities in the way people think and act. When I teach security classes with my mentor, Mati, he talks about a payload encoder called "shikata ga nai," which is Japanese for "it cannot be helped" or roughly translated, "there is no hope."

I thought about making that the epigraph, but I thought the phrase "there is no hope" is a little more fatalistic than I like to be normally. Instead, I feel the thought about practice and knowledge fits more of the theme of the book. I have stated time and again that perfecting the skills as well as the ability to detect these skills in use takes a lot more than just knowledge. Being too afraid about the things I have mentioned in this book leads to anger at all the ways people get hacked, which only leads down a path that will cause us to close our minds. Instead I suggest a different approach to the information in this book besides fear: A new mindset that encourages you to learn and think and understand the methods the "bad guys" use so you can be protected from falling prey to them.

Now I am not saying that there is no place for fear. There definitely is room to feel some healthy fear. Protecting your data, your personal information, and your identity, but at the same time understanding the "hacker" mindset combined with the information ...