Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tag: Pentests

Don't include social engineering in penetration tests

I’m not a fan of including social engineering – spearphishing, calls to support tickets, office visits – as part of penetration tests. These activities are risky, and often involve borderline and outright inappropriate behavior. Further, they tend not to produce useful results.

I encourage you to explicitly forbid social engineering attacks in your pentest scopes. Instead, try simulating the kinds of compromises that social engineering attacks lead to, with an emphasis on detection and response. This provides much more satisfying and useful outcomes, without the risks that allowing social engineering introduces.