Secret Service laced honeypot with seduction to catch hackers

The Ultimate Guide to Social Engineering states “social engineers offer free gifts of favors” counting on the fact that reciprocation is a human impulse. An example is to give a “plate of cookies,” but what if the bait goodies were more along the lines of a plate of nookie?   

We don’t often hear too much about U.S. Secret Service cyber investigations, but since its beginning in 1865 the USSS mission had to evolve from “its original counterfeit currency investigations to also include emerging financial crimes.” The 2011 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report [PDF] included data from 257 Secret Service cybercrime investigations. In fact, the agency is extremely good at getting the job done and frequently investigates electronic crime, data theft and security breaches. But what if hacking the hacker was less high-tech, less about following a cyber-trail, and more about good old-fashion seduction to find a chink in the cybercrook’s armor? USSS social engineering using sex as bait helped lure Romanian hackers to America where two men were immediately arrested upon their entry to the United States.