Security professionals are no strangers to black-hat hackers' social engineering tactics, and the news is filled with well-known examples of them enabling massive breaches. But if these techniques work so well at the micro level, what happens when the same core principles are deployed by governments against millions of people at once?
This talk expands the lens through which we normally view social engineering in cyber security. Rather than focusing on isolated cyberattacks, we'll examine how propaganda, disinformation, and psychological manipulation are engineered at national and global scales, and how strikingly similar they are to the phishing emails and pretexts we warn about daily.
Ignoring the 'macro' side of social engineering is no longer an option for defenders.
