It is somehow shocking the first time one hears about "social engineering." At least it was shocking for me. Hacking is thought of as an ac-tivity pursued solely, nocturnally, relentlessly, for hour after midnight hour, by some dazed and nerdish character banging away at a computer keyboard in feverish pursuit of that single
golden word which will grant access to the technological secrets of the universe.
That is how it was at some point in the past, until it became impractical. Those brute force methods are certainly valid, and they are the bread and butter of any well-stocked hacker's arsenal. But there are other ways to learn pass-words; social engineering is one of them.
"Social engineering" is the attempt to talk a lawful user of the system into revealing all that is necessary to break through the security barri-ers. The alternate term for this is "bullshitting the operator."
Social Engineering (SE) appears in a variety of forms and disguises. Here I will list many of them. As you will surely discover for yourself, there is a cornucopia of clever twists and vari-ations to be made on each of these examples. Some twists I will examine, others will be left for you to creatively imagine.
