“Look What You Made Me Do”: The Psychology behind Social Engineering & Human Intelligence Operations

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Presented at DeepSec 2024 by

Christina Lekati

Social Engineering and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) operations both rely heavily on effectively navigating a person’s mind in order to steer their behavior. As simple as this sounds, “quick and dirty” influence tactics will not take an operator very far. Behavior engineering is a complex, multilayered process that requires a good understanding of human psychology and self-awareness. In this intensive masterclass, participants will get access to the underlying psychology responsible for the way people think, decide, and act. They will also learn to influence and reshape all three of these layers. What are people’s automatic triggers? How can you engineer predictable action-reaction responses that produce an desirable outcome? How do you cultivate a target into taking specific actions or divulging information? But also, what are the ethical boundaries and moral implications of this process? The class will revolve around two main pillars: Understanding humans. Some of the areas we will cover include: - Human needs (universal, individual) - Decision making - Perception engineering and re-framing - The person and the situation - Profiling (online & in-person) Engaging effectively with human targets: - Developing the right mindset - Reading body language - Using body language to connect, establish trust or communicate authority - Planning the approach - Building rapport & engineering trust - Enhanced influence tactics - Elicitation - …and more! This class is a rare opportunity to gather insights that are almost never been taught in open classes. We will work these concepts around the scenarios of social engineering, covert HUMINT and virtual HUMINT.