Social Engineering
The Science of Human Hacking
Christopher Hadnagy
1
A Look into the New World of Professional Social Engineering
I suppose your security is your success, and your key to success is your fine palate.
—GORDON RAMSAY
I s…The IBM “2017 Cost of Data Breach Study” states that the average cost of a breach was 3.62 million US$. When the potential for a payout is that large, it’s certainly not hard to see why an attacker would want to use social engineering.
Soc…
Christopher Hadnagy
engineer · 2 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Christopher Hadnagy is a security researcher and author known for systematizing social engineering—the art of manipulating humans to compromise systems—as a technical discipline with predictable psychological mechanics. His work appears in the course readings as a practical counterpoint to purely technical approaches to cybersecurity, demonstrating how human vulnerability represents the greatest attack surface and thus a critical blind spot in AI and automated defense systems. By treating social engineering as a quantifiable science rather than mere manipulation, Hadnagy's framework illuminates the gap between computational security and embodied social reality that matters deeply for understanding how intelligent systems interact with human infrastructure.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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