I recently witnessed some great examples of Social Engineering – gaining information from organisations that is not normally made public. This was listening to someone on the phone trying to get the names and contact details of some influential people.
One of my favourites was the line: “I have a note in my diary to give nnn a call…” this makes it all official and implies that the call is to some degree expected by the recipient. Try this the next time you want to make a high level complaint to the chairman of a company!
Another was asking to be put through to the big names PA and then asking for the e-mail address so that you can send a social invitation. Once the rapport is there you never know what else you could discover.
A final thought – in some environments carrying a pizza delivery box can be another route to get into a building.
Let’s keep things safe!
