Learn how attackers use psychological manipulation to trick people into revealing sensitive information or performing unsafe actions. Topics include pretexting, baiting, tailgating, vishing, and real-world social engineering case studies that expose common human vulnerabilities.
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In January 2023, a former Tesla employee leaked the personal information of over 75,000 people — names, Social Security numbers, financial records — to a foreign news outlet. Tesla confirmed the breach wasn't caused by a sophisticated threat actor or a zero-day exploit. It was an insider. If you&
Two Employees, Two Paths to a Breach In May 2023, Tesla disclosed that two former employees had leaked the personal data of over 75,000 workers — including Social Security numbers and financial records — to a German news outlet. That wasn't a sophisticated nation-state hack. It was insiders walking
In January 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice charged a former Twitter employee with spying for Saudi Arabia — accessing the personal data of dissidents and handing it to foreign intelligence. He'd worked at the company for years. Passed background checks. Sat in meetings. Nobody flagged a thing
A Single Text Message Cost One Company $20 Million In August 2022, a Twilio employee received a text message that looked like it came from IT. It said the employee's password had expired and offered a helpful link. That single tap led to a breach that cascaded across
In January 2022, the FBI issued a public warning that the cybercriminal group FIN7 had been mailing malicious USB drives to U.S. companies — disguised as packages from Amazon and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The drives, once plugged in, deployed ransomware onto corporate networks. This
In January 2023, a journalist walked into a government building in the Netherlands, plugged a small device into an exposed network port under a conference room table, and had access to the internal network within seconds. No hacking. No malware. No phishing email. Just a physical door that was unlocked
In 2019, a man wearing a reflective vest and carrying a clipboard walked into a secure data center in Atlanta, unplugged a server, tucked it under his arm, and walked right back out the front door. Nobody stopped him. Nobody questioned him. A $2.5 million client database left the
In January 2023, T-Mobile disclosed that a threat actor had stolen data on roughly 37 million customer accounts by exploiting a single API vulnerability. But here's what most people missed in the headlines — the breach went undetected for over a month. That's not just a technology
In May 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — the category that includes every CEO fraud email scam — caused adjusted losses exceeding $2.7 billion in 2022 alone. That made it the single most financially devastating cybercrime category the FBI tracks. Not ransomware.
In January 2022, a European subsidiary of the Japanese manufacturer Nikkei lost $29 million after a single employee followed wire transfer instructions from a fraudulent email that impersonated a senior executive. That wasn't a failure of firewalls or endpoint detection. It was a surgical, well-researched executive phishing attack
