We all, who have not yet tasted the fun of hacking, have a misconception that hacking needs a mastery on programming languages and logical skills.
But its neither truth nor false.
Yes hacking needs these two weapons. But there is a style of hacking which requires a much required technical skilland more of a coning skill. This style is well known as MANIPULATION.
An example of the using the art of manipulation is illustrated in the following example. The facilitator of a live Computer Security Institute demonstration showed the vulnerability of help desks when he dialed up a phone company, got transferred around, and reached the help desk. "Who's the supervisor on duty tonight?" "Oh, it's Betty." "Let me talk to Betty." [He's transferred.] "Hi Betty, having a bad day?" "No, why?…Your systems are down." She said, "my systems aren't down, we're running fine." He said, "you better sign off." She signed off. He said, "now sign on again." She signed on again. He said, "we didn't even show a blip, we show no change." He said, "sign off again." She did. "Betty, I'm going to have to sign on as you here to figure out what's happening with your ID. Let me have your user ID and password." So this senior supervisor at the help desk tells him her user ID and password. In a few minutes a hacker is able to get information that might have taken him days to get by capturing traffic and cracking the password. It is much easier to gain information by social engineering than by technical methods. People are usually the weakest link in the security chain. A successful defense depends on having good policies in place and teaching employees to follow the policies. Social engineering is the hardest form of attack to defend against because a company can't protect itself with hardware or software alone.
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