Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking

8.7. Why Case Studies Are Important

These case studies are just a few of the stories that are out there, and these are by far not the scariest. Every day governments, nuclear power plants, multibillion-dollar corporations, utility grids, and even whole countries fall victim to malicious social engineering attacks, and that doesn't even include the personal stories of scams, identity theft, and robbery that are occurring by the minute.

As sad as reading all these stories is, one of the best ways to learn is by reviewing case studies. Experts from all fields utilize this methodology. Psychologists and doctors review countless hours of tapes and interviews to study the microexpressions people use when feeling certain emotions.

Persuasion experts review, analyze, and study accounts of positive and negative persuasion. Doing so helps them to pick up on the subtle areas that affect people and see how they can be used to learn and to protect their clients.

Law enforcement reviews case studies as part of their everyday lives to learn what makes a criminal tick. Along those lines, criminal investigators analyze and dissect every aspect of a malicious person, including what he eats, how he interacts with others, what he thinks about, and what makes him react. All of this information helps them to truly understand the mind of the criminal.

These same methods are how professional profilers target and catch the "bad guys." In the same fashion, professional social engineers learn a lot by ...