Social Engineering (SE) is both incredibly complex and amazingly simple.
What really is social engineering? We define it as the act of influencing a person to accomplish goals that may or may not be in the “target’s” best interest. This may include obtaining information, gaining access, or getting the target to take certain action. It may also include positive forms of communication such as with parents, therapists, children, spouse and others.
Due to the mystery surrounding this dark art many people are afraid of it, or they feel they will never be able to accomplish a successful social engineering test. However, every time you try to get someone to do something that is in your interest, you are engaging in social engineering. From children trying to get a toy from their parents to adults trying to land a job or score the big promotion, all of it is a form of social engineering.
One day we started to search for information to develop some training on the topic of SE as it applies to pentesting. We were astounded to see that the web really lacked a good source of information on this valuable topic. There was a multitude of sources of great technical pentesting info, but SE was a different story.
We found plenty of stories about getting free pizzas, tons of stories of famous social engineers and their adventures and more than a few good articles, but not one site that collectively contained, developed and organized this information. Nothing even close to the level of documentation required to treat social engineering like a science…. like an ART.
And like any science, social engineering can be used for different purposes. So whether you are in sales, politics, penetration testing, law enforcement or just want to improve your dealings with others, this site is for you.
This gave birth to www.social-engineer.org – a site that will only get better with willing participation from an educated and motivated community. Our site is designed to grow as we grow. We will discuss new and innovative ways to tie social engineering into your skill set. We will continually develop our framework. We hope it will become a standard in SE. We encourage you to become a part of this community, give us feed back, submit ideas and your thoughts.
Join us as we document, manipulate, and exploit the HumanOS.
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