Social Engineering - Christopher Hadnagy [138]
It is also how whole groups of people can be manipulated into thinking a certain action or attitude is acceptable. You can see this in the entertainment industry as each year the standard of what is acceptable or moral seems to get lowered, yet this drop in standards is sold as “freedom.”
These three incentives are not the only types that are used. They can branch off into other aspects beyond the scope of this book, but the question still arises of how you can use them as a social engineer.
Manipulation in Social Engineering
Manipulation is less about making others think like you do and making them feel comfortable, and more about coercing them to do what you want.
Coercion is not a friendly word. It means “to force to act or think in a certain manner” or “to dominate, restrain, or control by force.”
Manipulation and coercion use psychological force to alter the ideology, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of the target. The key to using them is to make the steps so small they are almost invisible. The social engineer doesn’t want to alert the target he is being manipulated. Some of the following methods may be very controversial and downright horrible, but they are used each day by scammers, identity thieves, and the like. One of the goals of manipulation can be to create anxiety, stress, and undue social pressure. When a target feels that way he is more likely to take an action the social engineer is manipulating them to take.
With that in mind, you can see why manipulation is often thought of in a negative light, but it is used in social engineering and therefore must be discussed.
Increasing a Target’s Suggestibility
Increasing a target’s suggestibility can involve using the neurolinguistic programming (NLP) skills discussed in Chapter 5 or other visual cues. Earlier you read about conditioning people with the use of pen clicks or other noises or gestures that can elicit an emotion even when words are not spoken.
I once saw this in action when I was with a person who was manipulating a target. He used a pen click to indicate a positive thought. He would say something positive and then smile and click his pen. Literally, I saw the person begin to smile after about four or five times of hearing the pen click. He then brought up a very depressing subject and clicked his pen, and then the target smiled and felt instantly embarrassed. That embarrassment was the open door he needed to manipulate the target to do what he wanted.
Creating a situation where the other person feels susceptible to suggestion can be through repetition of ideas or other means that will soften the target to the ideas you are trying to present.
A social engineer can make sure the whole setup is geared towards this manipulation—the phrases used, the word pictures painted, the clothing colors chosen to wear. All of it can make the target more susceptible.
William Sargant, a controversial psychiatrist and author of the book Battle for the Mind, talks about the methods by which people are manipulated. According to Sargant, various types of beliefs can be implanted in people after the target has been disturbed by fear, anger, or excitement. These feelings cause heightened suggestibility and impaired judgment.
A social engineer can use this device to their advantage by offering the target a suggestion that causes fear or excitement and then offering a solution that turns into a suggestion.
For example, in the hit BBC TV show The Real Hustle, the cast ran a scam to show how this works when they set up a booth in a mall that allowed people to buy raffle tickets. People would buy a ticket for a chance to win three prizes worth much more than the ticket they just bought.
One woman bought the ticket, and, of course, she won the biggest prize. Her excitement was extreme because she had never won anything like this before. At this point, Paul