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novel #32

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Edited by Neil Anderson, Saturday, 17 Mar 2012, 11:00

Usually I just watch, most people write down their passwords somewhere, you just have to look at what their body is pointing at. Mostly it's written on the bottom of their scratch-pad; I write bombs on the bottom of mine.

I didn't have hard-access to this guy, and I really needed his log-in stuff.

I'd checked out the log-in form, it didn't seem to be throttled—I could make multiple attempts without it locking me out. I'd throw in a random timeout and I'd use TOR, but that bit was comfortable.

He hadn't done anything mutton-headed, things like password and 1234 didn't work. I was tempted to brute-force, but that isn't elegant.

He didn't have much of an online presence. By which I mean that he just wasn't there, rather than that he was and wasn't giving away much. Which would have been the worst of all possible worlds. Still it was a problem: I didn't have a handle on what he was all about. I'd treat him as vanilla.

Social engineering requires forethought, it's no use just ringing up and asking whatever comes into your mind. I usually pretend to be selling something, that annoys people, and annoyed people make mistakes.

I wanted his daughter's name, which I got and was his password [OK, there was a bit of odd capitalization, but the script dealt with that].

Now I'm in, time to elevate...

 

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JoAnn Casey

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Wow.  Spooky.