Practical Social Engineering

An ethical introduction to social engineering; an attack technique that leverages psychology, deception, and publicly available information to breach the defenses of a human target in order to gain access to an asset. Social engineering is key to the effectiveness of any computer security professional.

Readers learn how to leverage human psychology and publicly available information to attack a target. The book includes sections on how to evade detection, spear phish, generate reports, and protect victims to ensure their well-being. Readers learn how to collect information about a target and how to exploit that information to make their attacks more effective. They also learn how to defend themselves or their workplace against social engineering attacks. Case studies throughout offer poignant examples such as how the author was able to piece together the details of a person's life simply by gathering details from an overheard restaurant conversation. Gray walks readers through the sometimes difficult decision making process that every ethical social engineer must go through when implementing a phishing engagement including how to decide whether to do things manually or use automated tools; even how to set up their web server and built other technical tools necessary to succeed.

About the Author

Joe Gray served for 7 years as a Submarine Navigation Electronics Technician in the U.S. Navy. He is a Senior OSINT Specialist at Qomplx, Inc. and has contributed materials to AlienVault, ITSP Magazine, CSO Online, Forbes, and Dark Reading. Gray has won multiple social engineering competitions, speaks frequently on the subject at conferences, and is already arranging numerous book signings. Gray has an MS in Information Technology from Capella University where he focused on Information Assurance and Security.