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Felicity Glover

The Art of Deception

By Kevin Mitnick with William Simon

Published by John Wiley & Sons

'Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.' - Albert Einstein.

Legendary hacker Kevin Mitnick is out of jail and operating on the right side of the law these days, probably much to the relief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mitnick was on the run from the FBI for three years in the 1990s for hacking into corporate computer networks. He spent nearly five years in jail.

Now 39, he appears to have mellowed and is offering his expertise to the type of companies he broke into in The Art of Deception.

The book is a fascinating insight into the minds of social engineers, how they operate and why companies are at risk.

'Great,' you might think, 'a book full of scams to gain confidential information about companies and banks . . . there's lots of money to be made here!'

But Mitnick keeps the book on an even keel with advice to companies on how to keep the social engineers out.

Mitnick says the human factor is security's weakest link and this is what the social engineer relies on to get his information.

'Social engineering attacks can succeed when people are stupid or, more commonly, simply ignorant about good security practices,' he writes.

He says the purpose of the book is to help companies understand how staff can be manipulated and what can be done to prevent them becoming victims.

'The book focuses mainly on the non-technical methods that hostile intruders use to steal information, compromise the integrity of information that is believed to be safe but isn't, or destroy company work product,' he says.

Who is to blame for our vulnerability to social engineers? Mitnick, who needed official permission to write the book, blames our parents.

'Every reader will have been manipulated by the grand experts of all time in social engineering - their parents,' he says.

'They found ways to get you - 'for your own good' - to do what they thought best. Parents become great storytellers in the same way that social engineers skilfully develop very plausible stories, reasons and justifications for achieving their goals.

'Yes, we were all molded by our parents: benevolent [and sometimes not so benevolent] social engineers.'

Okay. So mum and dad are to blame for our weakness to trust even strangers who pretend they work for the same company.

But how do you explain that to the boss when a social engineer walks away with millions of dollars after you naively slipped him the bank codes for that day?

Read the book - it's worth it, if even for the mind-boggling scams.

felicity.glover@scmp.com



Legendary hacker finds human link is weakest