Hacking your Mind and Emotions

Most admins will agree that users tend to be the weakest link in the maintenance of security in an environment. People are easily manipulated by their very nature. Social Engineering techniques are used on us every day, and I will demonstrate how you can learn to recognize those techniques and build some strong defenses in your environment. I will discuss and demonstrate some basic psychology, social engineering theory and actual implementation at several levels: Remote interaction, Indirect manipulation, and one-on-one engineering. I will also discuss some defense against these attacks through the use of effective policies and awareness training.

Branson is a 25-year veteran of system administration and security. He started as a cryptologist for the US Navy and has since worked on NASA shuttle projects, TSA security and monitoring systems, and Internet search engines, while continuing to support many open source projects. He founded sandSecurity to provide policy and technical audits, plus support and training for IT security, system administrators, and developers. Branson currently is a systems architect for NASA; has his CEH, GSEC, GCIH, and several other credentials; and generally likes to spend time responding to the statement "I bet you can't."