Doing research

The success of a pretext can be directly attributed to the amount of time spent doing researching on it. The more a social engineer is informed about a pretext, the higher the chances are that it will work. The reverse is also true because the less a social engineer knows about a pretext, the higher the chances of mistakes and ultimately a failure of the pretext. A big chunk of the research will fall into identifying the interests and connections of a target. This will enable the social engineer to mold the perfect scenario for the pretext and also to decide on the personality pretext to assume. Humans have several weaknesses, and they are closely tied to their personalities. It is these weaknesses that social engineers will ...

Get Learn Social Engineering now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.