[Air-L] Social Engineering

[Alex Halavais]

Just a terminology clarification...

Even in the late 80s and early 90s, I think there was a feeling that
there was an opportunity to engage in "social engineering" of the sort
Prof. Turoff mentions. When I moved from computer science to political
science as an undergraduate at UC Irvine--a university where those two
departments were closer than in many places at the time--it was
explicitly because I wanted to apply the ideas behind the design of
complex computer systems to ideas behind designing social
institutions, and there were like-minded faculty and students.

However, political scientists and techies tend to use the same term to
mean different things. I believe the initial question may have to do
with a different sort of "social engineering"; via the "Jargon File":

"Term used among crackers and samurai for cracking techniques that
rely on weaknesses in wetware rather than software; the aim is to
trick people into revealing passwords or other information that
compromises a target system's security. Classic scams include phoning
up a mark who has the required information and posing as a field
service tech or a fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See
also the tiger team story in the patch entry, and rubber-hose
cryptanalysis."

This includes everything from phishing attacks to pretexting over the
phone and dumpster diving for useful password info...

- Alex



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