Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2021

Today is the second day of the fourteenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior. The University of Cambridge is the host, but we’re all on Zoom. SHB is a small, annual, invitational ...
Socially Engineered - Humans

Socially Engineered – Humans 

In This Issue: "Socially Engineered —Humans". From Fortune 500 companies, to kids and retirees, and everyone in between, we are all potential targets of social engineers. In this newsletter we examine social ...
Billy Boatright - Swing Away  Conquer Impostor Syndrome - DEF CON 27 Social Engineering Village

Overcome the Impostor Syndrome 

Have you ever felt like you don’t deserve to be where you are professionally? Studies show that an estimated 70% of people have experienced Impostor Syndrome at one time in their life ...
Fear as part of my pretext

Is It Legit to Use Fear as Part of My Pretext?

One question I get asked often is, “Chris, isn’t it legit to use fear as part of my pretext in a social engineering exercise? I mean, after all, the bad guys are ...

Scaring People into Supporting Backdoors

Back in 1998, Tim May warned us of the "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse": "terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers." I tended to cast it slightly differently. This is me from ...

What Happened to Cyber 9/11?

A recent article in the Atlantic asks why we haven't seen a"cyber 9/11" in the past fifteen or so years. (I, too, remember the increasingly frantic and fearful warnings of a "cyber ...

John Mueller and Mark Stewart on the Risks of Terrorism

Another excellent paper by the Mueller/Stewart team: "Terrorism and Bathtubs: Comparing and Assessing the Risks": Abstract: The likelihood that anyone outside a war zone will be killed by an Islamist extremist terrorist ...
Free Yourself from FUD

Free Yourself from FUD

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) hold powerful influence over humans. Fear itself is a deeply powerful emotion that causes specific reactions in the brain, and uncertainty and doubt are feelings that manipulate ...