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Isn't social engineering just conning? Why do we need a new name? I remember a bit from The Art of The Steal which was written by Frank Abagnale, who is the re

Isn't social engineering just conning? Why do we need a new name? I remember a bit from The Art of The Steal which was written by Frank Abagnale, who is the real life inspiration for Catch Me if You Can. He talked about how to make free long distance calls in those days. Call a company via a payphone. Ask to be transferred to the switchboard. Make up some BS about being a part of the company and urgently needing to make an outside call. They dial the number and connect you, the end. Sounds like "social engineering" to me as well. Or just good old fashioned conning, possibly re-discovered by hackers and given a new title. They're just using the same methods we've been using to get private information since the dawn of private information. Namely sweet-talking third parties that hold the information and don't really know any better.

Splines 14y ago
I read "Ghost in the Wires" (a book about Kevin Mitnick's life) a month or two ago, and it's astonishing how well he knew the system. He was doing stuff like the above, but also getting around the callback as well (I don't recall exactly what he did, but it was something along the lines of conning the line workers to divert an exec's phone number for testing purposes just long enough to get the callback). That was just one of many times he pulled these sorts of stunts for curiousity's sake.
far-I 14y ago
I was thinking the same thing today after finishing Mitnick's last book and I was wondering when they started using that expression because he uses it in the book but I wonder if the term even existed in the 90's. Now, we have S.E.T., which is called a social engineering toolkit but compared to what Mitnick was doing, sending an email to someone hoping he might open it is a really light form of social engineering. The funny thing is, people are always going to be vulnerable to these types of attacks.

Splines 14y ago

I read "Ghost in the Wires" (a book about Kevin Mitnick's life) a month or two ago, and it's astonishing how well he knew the system. He was doing stuff like the above, but also getting around the callback as well (I don't recall exactly what he did, but it was something along the lines of conning the line workers to divert an exec's phone number for testing purposes just long enough to get the callback). That was just one of many times he pulled these sorts of stunts for curiousity's sake.

far-I 14y ago

I was thinking the same thing today after finishing Mitnick's last book and I was wondering when they started using that expression because he uses it in the book but I wonder if the term even existed in the 90's. Now, we have S.E.T., which is called a social engineering toolkit but compared to what Mitnick was doing, sending an email to someone hoping he might open it is a really light form of social engineering. The funny thing is, people are always going to be vulnerable to these types of attacks.