A while ago on LinkedIn I posted the following riddle and its answer. It got lots of interaction because EVERYONE when they put their minds to it, likes to think of themselves as a Social Engineer, at least some of the time! Here’s a Social Engineering riddle, answer below. A few years ago…
A while ago, I was speaking at a conference in the north of England. I wasn’t especially enamoured of the topic and was doing it as a favour for the organiser who was an old friend. I wasn’t “on” until late afternoon so I had a few hours to kill after lunch at the hotel….
A couple of years ago at a conference in Texas I heard the phrase “in the weeds.” It means being in the sort of situation where you get so emerged in the details “the weeds” that it is hard to get any kind of productive perspective, or non-biased view. The English equivalent phrase would…
I was recently reminded of the saying “perfect is the enemy of good”and this got me thinking about personal demons and the things that block our creativity, productivity and ability to meet our goals. Years ago I worked for a ferocious Irish director who was feared and admired in equal measure. He was great at…
Social Engineering, biometrics and human error are at the heart of the story of Rapunzel, along with proof that if somebody wants something badly enough they will find a way to get to it, regardless of the measures in place to protect it. In the story from the brothers Grimm, Rapunzel’s imprisonment in the tower…
http://www.itsecurityguru.org/2015/03/17/spotting-the-threat-within/
http://www.itsecurityguru.org/2015/03/16/attacking-from-the-outside/
I don’t know if the phrase “the bigger they come, the harder they fall” was around when Shakespeare was alive but it applies to his tragic heroes across the board. If we look at his BIG FOUR, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear, he uses the plays to show how heroes, however mighty, can…
Social engineers come in many different flavours, from the disgruntled ex-employee who wants to disrupt his former employers activities, to the criminal who is looking for financial gain, to the activist who has an axe to grind with an organization, the type of attacker and their motivation for hitting a target varies widely. However,…
