social engineering

social engineering

Using persuasion and deception to obtain confidential information from someone by phone or in person. It is the low-tech approach for breaking into a computer system. Sometimes, a combination of social engineering and hacker skills are used to steal information.

Outside the computer world, social engineering means to influence attitudes and behaviors. See social engineer and pretexting.

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(jargon, security)

social engineering - A term used among crackers and samurai for cracking techniques that rely on weaknesses in wetware rather than software; the aim is to trick people into revealing passwords or other information that compromises a target system's security. Classic scams include phoning up a mark who has the required information and posing as a field service tech or a fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See also the tiger team story in the patch entry.