Reverse Social Engineering

Elicitation, Persuasion, Interrogation and Dumpster Diving. Learn these techniques to protect yourself from those trying to use them against you.

The most dangerous exploits in the cybercriminal’s arsenal aren’t malware or complex zero-day hacks. It’s trust and human error.

Social engineering is the art of weaponizing human psychology. Why bother about firewalls and encryption if you can persuade someone to open the door willingly? Phishing emails, fake invoices, spoofed phone calls: none of these require technical genius, yet they generate billions in profit each year.

What makes social engineering so effective is its simplicity. The victim does most of the work: clicking the malicious link, wiring the money, forwarding the confidential document.

And this is not rare at all! Social engineering has been industrialized. Automated systems are nowadays often powered by AI, churning out personalized scams on a scale so vast that mistakes are inevitable. Entire criminal industries thrive on exploiting what makes us human: trust, fear, greed, and the desire to be helpful.

This is the backbone of modern cybercrime.

Let’s make a deep dive into social engineering and learn how to defend yourself, by reverse engineering it.

Dont’ be the next victim

You might think that only old people and fools can be tricked into a social engineering scheme. However, that’s not the case. Even intelligent, cautious, prepared people can fall for it. All it takes is the right amount of fear and urgency.