Frank Abagnale Quotes

Social engineering is using deception, manipulation and influence to convince a human who has access to a computer system to do something, like click on an attachment in an e-mail.

Social engineering bypasses all technologies, including firewalls.

Social engineering is using manipulation, influence and deception to get a person, a trusted insider within an organization, to comply with a request, and the request is usually to release information or to perform some sort of action item that benefits that attacker.

The key to social engineering is influencing a person to do something that allows the hacker to gain access to information or your network.

It is impossible to work in information technology without also engaging in social engineering.

I don't think we can afford to wait when it comes to cybersecurity. I think that every day we wait, if an attack occurs - and we're getting hit every day - but if a greater attack occurs, it's going to be on the head of Congress for not acting.

There are two types of companies in the world: those that know they've been hacked, and those that don't.

Penetrating a company's security often starts with the bad guy obtaining some piece of information that seems so innocent, so everyday and unimportant, that most people in the organization don't see any reason why the item should be protected and restricted.

A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on firewalls, intrusion detection systems and encryption and other security technologies, but if an attacker can call one trusted person within the company, and that person complies, and if the attacker gets in, then all that money spent on technology is essentially wasted.

What the Snowden scenario proved is that the weakest link is not the technology, the weakest link is the individual; we shouldn't kid ourselves.

A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.

I am not sure, therefore, that the highest talent for dissimulation does not belong to a people that does not have that very great physical advantage: the Japanese. Their ability to gain our confidence and appropriate our technology and science is simply phenomenal.

I was one of the first practitioners of social engineering as a hacking technique, and today it is my only tool of use, aside from a smartphone - in a purely white hat sort of way. But if you don't trust me, then ask any reasonably competent social engineer.

It is a fiction to imagine that the haphazard paper chits of old are more private than the modern digital alternative. Paper records have always presented a security risk.

We're all vulnerable, and it's all hackable. If someone wants you and has targeted you, you can be taken down, and that fact is really scary.

The methods that will most effectively minimize the ability of intruders to compromise information security are comprehensive user training and education. Enacting policies and procedures simply won't suffice. Even with oversight the policies and procedures may not be effective: my access to Motorola, Nokia, ATT, Sun depended upon the willingness of people to bypass policies and procedures that were in place for years before I compromised them successfully.

People often represent the weakest link in the security chain and are chronically responsible for the failure of security systems.

There are programs such as the NSA paying RSA $10 million to use an insecure encryption standard by default in their products. That's making us more vulnerable not just to the snooping of our domestic agencies, but also foreign agencies.

Well, Keith Alexander, the former director of the NSA wants to say every company in the United States falls under one of two categories, those that have been hacked and those that don't yet know it.

I'm a sitting duck. No, seriously, I mean I wish I could say more, but I'm a sitting duck because I can't get ahead of them [cyber experts]. They're far ahead of me. That's what I learned: how vulnerable we are. It's a big, silent monster out there. That's what it feels like.

Social Engineering - the art of replacing what works with what sounds good.

She [Hillary Clinton] used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries.

In the future, the cyber threat will equal or even eclipse the terrorist threat.

I can try to wheedle information out of people," Holly offered. "For which I'll need a lower-cut top.

Only amateurs attack machines; professionals target people.