New Defcon contest tests hackers' social-engineering skills
Social engineering has evidently earned a new level of respect from hacker community: For the first time, this year's Defcon gathering in Las Vegas will feature a contest in which participants will compete to gather nuggets of information from unsuspecting target companies -- over the telephone instead of the Internet.
Social engineering has enjoying an increasingly effective and prominent role in effective online attacks. The term itself is a big one, encompassing targeted surveillance and information-gathering techniques that early hacking stars such as Kevin Mitnick mastered (and went on to write about), down to the ubiquitous phishing and spam email message.
