Both social engineering and technical attacks played a big part in what I was able to do. It was a hybrid. I used social engineering when it was appropriate, and exploited technical vulnerabilities when it was appropriate.

The key to social engineering is influencing a person to do something that allows the hacker to gain access to information or your network.

Social engineering is using deception, manipulation and influence to convince a human who has access to a computer system to do something, like click on an attachment in an e-mail.

Social engineering is using manipulation, influence and deception to get a person, a trusted insider within an organization, to comply with a request, and the request is usually to release information or to perform some sort of action item that benefits that attacker.

There is no technology today that cannot be defeated by social engineering.

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology.