A guide to hacking the human element.Even the most advanced security teams can do little to defend against an employee clicking a malicious link, opening an email attachment, or revealing sensitive information in a phone call.
Practical Social Engineering will help you better understand the techniques behind these social engineering attacks and how to thwart cyber criminals and malicious actors who use them to take advantage of human nature.
Joe Gray, an award-winning expert on social engineering, shares case studies, best practices, open source intelligence (OSINT) tools, and templates for orchestrating and reporting attacks so companies can better protect themselves. He outlines creative techniques to trick users out of their credentials, such as leveraging Python scripts and editing HTML files to clone a legitimate website. Once you’ve succeeded in harvesting information about your targets with advanced OSINT methods, you’ll discover how to defend your own organization from similar threats.
You’ll learn how to:
Apply phishing techniques like spoofing, squatting, and standing up your own web server to avoid detection Use OSINT tools like Recon-ng, theHarvester, and Hunter Capture a target’s information from social media Collect and report metrics about the success of your attack Implement technical controls and awareness programs to help defend against social engineering Fast-paced, hands-on, and ethically focused,
Practical Social Engineering is a book every pentester can put to use immediately.
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.
Practical Social Engineering teaches you 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. You'll learn how to collect information about a target and how to exploit that information to make your attacks more effective. You'll also learn how to defend yourself or your 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 you 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 your web server and build other technical tools necessary to succeed.
"Gray provides a very accessible look at social engineering that should be essential reading for pentesters and ethical hackers."
—Ian Barker, BetaNews"I really liked the way that [Joe] lays out tools to use, including walking through where to download them from and install them . . . as beginner-friendly and as easy to use as possible."
—Patrick Laverty, Layer 8 Podcast 
