Social Engineering - Christopher Hadnagy [125]
Using the events of 9/11 combined with the fear of flying many people have due to those attacks enables the scanner companies to link their frame with the frame of fear many people have, and thereby gain support for implementing these devices in airports around the globe.
One of the other strengths of frame amplification is that it can be successfully used to blur the frame and cause people with a certain belief to distance themselves from that belief. For example, many who believed in privacy and the freedom to choose how to be screened have been brought into a different frame by the x-ray scanner manufacturers focusing on certain aspects of other screening methods being unsafe or incomplete, and to prove their point they bring out stories like “the underwear bomber.” Such tactics amplify their frame that the new x-ray scanners are better and safer, using widely held beliefs regarding the lack of security of other methods.
A social engineer can utilize this alignment technique in a few different ways. For instance, a social engineer may want to convince a security guard to give him access to an onsite dumpster area. The pretext of working for a waste disposal contractor is good and it very well may work alone, but it would work even better if you presented the idea that there is damage to one of the dumpsters, which represents a security liability for the company. Amplifying that frame can bring you to an alignment with the security guard that the best solution is allowing you onsite to check it out.
Frame Extension
“Frame extensions are a movement’s effort to incorporate participants by extending the boundaries of the proposed frame to encompass the views, interests, and, more importantly, the sentiments of a group.” In other words, by extending your frame’s boundaries to encompass other subjects or interests of your target, you can bring them into alignment.
For example, the possibility exists that groups who support environmental or “green” initiatives will extend their frame to antinuclear movements, stating they are under the umbrella of a being concerned about the environmental risks.
However, a risk with using frame extensions is they can weaken the stance on the original frame and a certain level of appeal can be lost. This can be done by including too many frame extensions into a certain frame, eventually diluting the main frame and causing interest to be lost.
Even on a personal level, simple is best. When using this frame alignment tactic, keep it simple and easy to follow. Don’t make the connecting web so convoluted you lose the interest of the target.
A social engineer may utilize this frame alignment technique through the elicitation skills discussed in Chapter 3. When a social engineer approaches a target, she can gather information about the target or their company by not acting interested in that but utilizing chit-chat at a party, or with a pretext as a reporter. This will give the social engineer the “right” to ask for information that they would normally have to work very hard to get.
Frame Transformation
“Frame transformation is a process required when the proposed frames may not resonate with, and on occasion may even appear antithetical to, conventional lifestyles or rituals and extant interpretive frames.” In other words, a social engineer offers new arguments that point to why their frame is better in an effort to transform the thoughts or beliefs of a target from where they are to where the social engineer wants them to be.
When a frame transformation occurs, new values and new understandings are required to keep people involved and keep their support. This type of transformation was done on a large social level in the 1970s where the conservative movement was reframed or transformed into a more progressive environmentalist movement.
On a smaller, more personal scale, frame transformations occur every day through religious conversion, in which a person’s frame or whole belief system is altered, changed, and transformed