The Social-Engineer Podcast

In this episode, Chris Hadnagy and Stephanie Paul introduce multiple different methods that can be used to become a better communicator and social engineer. They go into the practice required in changing the way you communicate and share some amazing experiences of people who were able to do so. They also go over how an unmotivated person can gain the ambition to accomplish their goals.  

01:10 – Introduction to Stephanie Paul. 

01:58 – Training people to be effective storytellers: How Stephanie came up with the idea.  

05:24 – Analyzing the applicability of social engineering principles in other fields. 

07:01 – The YOU method. 

13: 50 – Driving the CAAR method. 

15:19 – How an unambitious person can motivate themselves by changing their value system. 

22:55 – Announcements:  

New social-engineer.com website 

Advanced Practical Social Engineering Training 

Master's Level Social Engineering 

The Human Hacking Conference - 11-13 March, 2021 

Clutch 

The Innocent Lives Foundation  

24:41 – How you can improve as a person and social engineer by getting to know yourself 

29:04 – Improve by shifting your communication energy 

32:30 – Improve by utilizing humor 

35:30 – Improving your communication requires practice 

40:49 – Stephanie's contact info, courses and book. 

The “WHYGUIDE” To Story Hacking 

Apply for Stephanie's Online Training 

Stephanie's Social Media:

• Twitter 
• Facebook 
• LinkedIn 
• Instagram stephaniepaulinc.com

42:40 - Stephanie’s book recommendations 

#Values: The Secret to Top Level Performance in Business and Life 

The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain 

The Ellipsis Manual: analysis and engineering of human behavior 

Truth and Lies: What People Are Really Thinking 

Louder Than Words: Take Your Career from Average to Exceptional with the Hidden Power of Nonverbal Intelligence 

Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life 

Chris on Twitter  

Social-Engineer on Twitter 

Social-Engineer on Instagram  

Social-Engineer.org  

Social-Engineer.com  

The Human Hacking Conference 

The Human Hacking Conference on Twitter 

The Innocent Lives Foundation  

The Innocent Lives Foundation on Twitter 

In this episode Chris Hadnagy and Chani Simms reveal the secrets to becoming a better communicator and breaking into the InfoSec industry. They discuss the challenges women often face and how they can be overcome. They also go over the ways a newcomer can contribute to a more experienced team. 

00:05 – Introduction to Chani Simms and Her Experience as a Woman in the InfoSec Industry 

01:09 – Chani's TEDx Talk: “Stop chasing the magic security box” 

01:19 – How Chani Got into the Infosec Industry and Started Her Own Pentesting Company 

04:53 – Chani's Experience with Hacking, Forensics, Auditing, Risk Management, Consulting and as a Virtual CISO for Multiple Companies 

08:08 – The Prevalence of Women in the Sri Lankan Tech Industry 

10:47 - Chani Simms has been recognized as one of the "Top 50 Most Influential Women In Cybersecurity 2019" by SC Media UK 

11:25 – Chani's Reason for Starting SHe CISO  

13:13 – Chani Shares her Experience with Receiving the Awards 

17:14 – Chani Gives Advice to People Looking to Become Successful in this Industry 

20:10 – How to Deal with Feelings of Inadequacy in Order to Add Value to a Team 

23:15 – Upcoming Virtual Trainings and Human Hacking Conference Signups 

1-4 August, 2020 – Advanced Practical Social Engineering – Virtual Training 

11-13 March, 2021 – The Human Hacking Conference 

The Innocent Lives Foundation 

Clutch 

 25:10 – How a Newcomer to a Field can Still Add Value to a Team 

29:33 – How to Work with Unkind People in the Workplace 

31:09 – How to Accept Valid Criticism and Become a Better Communicator by Suspending Your Ego 

37:03 – Chani's Contact Info and More Info About SHe CISO 

LinkedIn 

Twitter 

SHe CISO Website 

SHe CISO Bootcamp 

41:09 – Chani's Book Recommendations 

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex 

The Definitive Book of Body Language: The Hidden Meaning Behind People's Gestures and Expressions 

45:04 – Conclusion and Outro 

Chris on Twitter 

Social-Engineer on Twitter  

The Human Hacking Conference on Twitter 

The Innocent Lives Foundation on Twitter 

Social-Engineer.org 

Social-Engineer.com 

The Human Hacking Conference 

The Innocent Lives Foundation 

Social-Engineer on Instagram 

In this episode, Chris Hadnagy and Dr. Vyv Evans discuss the widespread use of emoji and how it can help fill the gap between text and face-to-face communication. Emoji has the ability to add tone and expressions to text that it would otherwise be lacking. In in a single picture, they can express complex ideas that would otherwise require many words to convey.  

00:10 - Introduction to Dr. Vyv Evans and his Work on Emoji  01:37 - Brooklyn Teen Was Arrested for Threats Made with Emoji  03:52 - The 2 Main Functions of Language   06:12 - In Real World Scenarios, Communication Utilizes Multiple Channels  07:55 - Tone of Voice Can Change the Meaning of Our Words  09:05 - Gestures Can Change the Meaning of Our Words  10:59 - Emblems are nonverbal signals that can be translated directly into words.  12:50 - The Meaning of Emoji Can be Affected by Group or Cultural Factors  15:45 - The Rebus Principle is Used to Represent Abstract Words with Pictograms, Like Emoji  18:16 - Upcoming Virtual Trainings and Human Hacking Conference Signups.  

19:58 - The Differences Between the Emoji System and Language  22:46 - Emoji Helps Text Catch Up with the Tone and Kinesics Found in Spoken Face-to-Face Interaction  23:20 - Survey Done by Match.com Corelates the Use of Emoji to Increased Sexual Activity  24:38 - Emoji Makes Us More Effective Communicators in the Digital Space  26:09 - The Angry Jerk Phenomenon and How Emoji Can Help  27:35 - Why Visuals are Important to Communication  29:23 - The 😂 (Tears of Joy) Emoji Was Oxford Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” in 2015 31:05 - How Text Can Accidentally Convey the Wrong Tone  32:10 - Emoji Can Complement the Meaning of a Word   33:32 - Nonverbals are a Vital Component to Communication  35:47 - Discussing Whether a Decrease in Vocabulary May Have Contributed to the Creation of Nonverbal Communication and Emoji 

41:26 - Vyv’s Contact Info  Website: https://www.vyvevans.net/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/VyvEvans  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vyv-evans/ 

42:23 Vyv’s Books   https://www.vyvevans.net/books  The Emoji Code: The Linguistics Behind Smiley Faces and Scaredy Cats 42:44 Vyv’s Book Recommendations  Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language 

Episode Highlights:

• Mark shares his thought on being inauthentic. How he started in the nonverbal world and how he got engaged in writing books. Discusses being dyslexic, but reading images and creating images and critically thinking about images was easy for him.

Key Points:

• Do not mistake truths from facts they are not the same.
• If you tell a story and you massage some of the facts you sometimes get a stronger clearer truth from the story.
• People first need to think that it's valuable then believe that its true, so they go and use it.

Resources Mentioned:

• www.truthplane.com
• The Dictionary of Body Language by Joe Navarro (book)
• The Ellipsis Manual by Chase Hughes (book)
• Truth and Lies: What People are Really Thinking Mark Bowden (book)

Episode Highlights:

• Alethe shares her initial thoughts on receiving details about her target company.
• One mistake Alethe made in her first competition was misunderstanding that you can repeat flags.
• Alethe outlines how she prepared for the second competition, including watching re-enactment videos.
• Chris and Alethe discuss the importance of pretext and the key switch Alethe made.
• Alethe describes the experience of bringing a young baby to DefCon.
• She spent over 100 hours of time on her OSINT report. She spent even more time getting ready for the calls.
• Alethe tells us the most dangerous OSINT she found in her research.
• Alethe compares real-life vishing to competitive vishing.
• The time factor gave Alethe anxiety during her first competition. Learn how she managed this the second time around.
• They discuss the name game and how to use it effectively or ineffectively.
• Learn the important way the black badge changed Alethe’s life.

3 Key Points:

1. Dedicate a big chunk of time to prepare for the conference by listening to podcast episodes, watching re-enactments, and preparing your OSINT report.
2. In her OSINT research, Alethe was able to find information as dangerous as the types of equipment and software the company used freely available to the public.
3. In real-life vishing, you have time to establish rapport. Competitive vishing moves much faster.

Resources Mentioned:

• Chris Kirsh re-enactment video
• Alethe Denis Twitter, LinkedIn
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (book)
• Innocent Lives Foundation
• Human Hacker Twitter
• SE Village Twitter

• The Human Hacking Conference was about having a deep understanding of other human beings to help you make connections.
• Robin Dreeke’s presentation was about his code of trust and sizing people up with a step-by-step process.
• Next year he will do what he did this year but then go into sizing people up.
• Paul Wilson’s presentation was about how there’s a vast toolbox of manipulation that is untapped in the security community.
• People were supposed to walk away from Dov’s session with a sense of their own dragon fire.
• Stephanie Paul’s session was about helping people find their voice and their message from the inside out.
• She believes the conference ended up with a theme because they're all humans speaking to human qualities that we have.
• As they discuss why the conference had a theme, Paul asserts that the core element is story.
• The subject itself fed the experience of the weekend.
• Next year, Stephanie's session will be about learning through fun.
• Dov’s session next year will help you better understand your own emotional logic.
• Paul’s session next year will give people a toolkit for recognizing deception.

1. The Human Hacker Conference was all about helping people understand themselves and others.
2. Common themes emerged because presenters were speaking to the human qualities we all possess.
3. Story can be used to teach, to educate, to touch hearts and it can also be used against you.

• Robin Dreeke website
• Dov Baron website
• Stephanie Paul website
• R. Paul Wilson website
• Sizing People Up (book)
• Emotional Intelligence (book)
• The Why Guide to Story Hacking (Use code HACK4U for a special discount)
• Social-engineer.org
• Social-engineer.com
• Innocent Lives Foundation
• Human Hacker Twitter
• SE Village Twitter

3 Key Points:

1.   Conversational intelligence helps us understand how our brains and bodies interact  to create our experiences and how we can learn to control our experiences.
2. The Conversational Intelligence Matrix describes three levels of conversation: transactional, positional, and transformational. 
3. In order to improve CIQ, an individual must begin recognizing reality gaps, asking  more questions of others, and letting their guard down.

In Episode 125, host Chris Hadnagy speaks with William Ortiz, a federal polygraph examiner who worked in the FBI for decades. In this discussion, you’ll learn how the polygraph works, how people try to fool the polygraph, and what agents and attorneys are really after when they receive the results of a polygraph examination. You’ll also hear some tips and tricks about deception that can inform your everyday interactions.

3 Key Points:

1.   Polygraph is a tool alongside non-verbals and behavior analysis questions to determine whether someone is telling the truth. 
2.   Being nervous is part of taking the polygraph test. Being nervous will not affect the test, but helps to establish your baseline. 

3.   When you ask someone a question, pay attention to whether they answer it. Then ask more questions to see where they lead.

Welcome to another episode of The Social-Engineer Podcast! Host, Christopher Hadnagy, interviews Christopher Dwyer, on this 124th episode. Dr. Dwyer is a psychologist who has been researching critical thinking and cognitive energy throughout his career, including what it means to be a critical thinker. He started his PhD by researching argument mapping, focusing on the structure of arguments and the effect of it on memory performance.

Chris asks Dr. Dwyer how he would define critical thinking. For Dr. Dwyer, the term refers to purposeful, self-regulatory reflective judgment reliant on a number of skills in order to produce a valid conclusion to an argument or a solution to a problem. Dr. Dwyer explains how the term has come to have different meanings across the industry - but the main idea has been that core skills and core dispositions make up critical thinking. Dr. Dwyer is interested in how to enhance people’s critical thinking skills; however, he has found that it is very dependent on context and circumstances. He shares an example of this, comparing findings about critical thinking of traditional students and adult-learning course students. The mature students had worse critical thinking at the beginning of a class yet they improved more than traditional students over time.

Towards the end of the episode, Chris and Dr. Dwyer discuss how humans hate to be wrong, but love to be right. Dr. Dwyer says that this is due to risk aversion - we do not enjoy the things that are detrimental to us and we fear being found wanting. However, it is important to not let our fear stop us from critically thinking well.

On this episode of The Social-Engineer Podcast, host Chris sits down with Dr. Eva Krackow to discuss decision-making. Eva is an assistant professor in psychology at the University of Leicester, and focuses her research on judgement and decision-making, as well as how people can improve their daily choices for the better. Similarly, The Social-Engineer focuses on the end user, and how their decisions affect their online security. Eva talks about a game that was developed to research the difference in an individual’s behavior based on the motive of the game, being teamwork, or a competition, and how subtle framing can influence an individual’s behavior. Framing is a way to present an idea or concept to an individual to achieve desired results.

Chris and Eva discuss the parallels between online security, The Social-Engineer’s line of business, and an individual’s choice to lean towards a way of “framing” that appeals to them. In terms of phishing scams, where once there were emails riddled with errors, scams have become more intelligent, getting email correspondence to appear more legitimate. Framing of the message has become more professional and sophisticated. The framing of the emails has changed in a way to adapt to the individual reading the scam, allowing the scammer to continue to be successful in stealing identities and information.

Eva discusses issues that come along with our current age of social media, and how individuals are less likely to explore unfamiliar information because of the algorithms that these popular networking sites use to appease each individual user. Social media websites aren’t necessarily our friend when it comes to actual facts and accurate information, but it is coincidentally where most people are finding their news sources. She suggests we need to consistently look outside of our usual media sources, outside of our current friends list, and be aware of the information we’re absorbing. When we don’t take these initiatives on our own, we can find ourselves taking in a never ending supply of information that appeals specifically to us, making it easier to believe the news we take in to be fact, when many times, it’s not. Reframing our communication allows us to be more open to new information that we may not have been before, it can open doors we weren’t aware existed when we’re able to step outside of our comfort zone.

Listen to more episodes and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!

Links:

Find more of Dr. Eva Krackow’s articles at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us

Find more information about The Social-Engineer at: https://www.social-engineer.org/

Follow The Social-Engineer Podcast on Twitter (@humanhacker), YouTube, and LinkedIn

Eva's Book Recommendations:

Trevor Noah - Born a Crime