{"id":601,"date":"2004-09-30T20:58:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-30T20:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2004\/09\/30\/601\/"},"modified":"2004-09-30T20:58:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-30T20:58:00","slug":"601","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=601","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

SOCIAL ENGINEERING:<\/span> I did a web search on the term \u201csocial engineering\u201d the other day. Back in the late 19th and early 20th Century, SOCIAL ENGINEERING was the concept that intelligent planning and centralized controls could be used to change society into a kinder and gentler thing, where people could lead better lives. Social Engineering was once seen as the antidote to Hobbe\u2019s notion that life is \u201cnasty, brutish and short\u201d<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Obviously, social engineering didn\u2019t do too well in the 20th Century. And in the 21st Century, it\u2019s turned into something else entirely! I just found out today that \u201csocial engineering\u201d is now a method of overcoming an organization\u2019s security methods by exploiting people\u2019s tendencies to help other people. Classic hackers<\/span> try to get valuable information (like credit card and social security numbers) through high-tech methods of infiltrating computer systems and overcoming their defenses. But the \u201csocial engineers\u201d take a low-tech, high-psychology approach. They talk to employees and ask innocent questions. If the employee seems cooperative, they push it to the limit, eeking out enough info to get inside the door (where they can get some more info, on and on until they’re ready to do some real damage).<\/p>\n

Supposedly, a \u201csocial hacker\u201d managed to get $10 million<\/span> from a bank this way. On his first call to the bank\u2019s office, he got just enough information to impress the person who answered his next call. By the fourth or fifth call, he had all the codes needed to make a wire transfer. He was able to zap the money to a Swiss bank account in his name and then turn the funds into diamonds, which he brought back into the U.S.A. hidden in a belt. He got this far because humans tend to err on the side of helpfulness and trust. Well, you can be sure that the corporate security people and the homeland security folk are going to shut that down!<\/p>\n

But back to good old-fashioned<\/span> social engineering, the \u201cchange-the-world\u201d kind. That\u2019s now got a bad name too. The conservative types like to use it for target practice. I was reading a blog the other day (www.chronwatch.com, Dec. 6, 2003) that spoke of the evils of classic social engineering and the goodness of lassiez faire. The blogger, who claims to know a mistaken interpretation of Christian charity when he sees it, was chiding a public housing agency in Cleveland for spending taxpayer money to modify a subsidized apartment so that an 800 pound woman who needed a cheap apartment could get in and out. Obviously, wider doorways had to be cut out, and who knows what kind of bathroom appliances were needed. This guy implies that the lady could only blame herself<\/span> for getting that fat; by bowing to her needs, society will only encourage such gluttony in others. (He\u2019s also against spending public money to save near-extinct species like pandas; hey, if they can\u2019t adapt to a polluted world, who needs em?)<\/p>\n

OK — so, by that logic, the next time an SUV<\/span> flips over on the freeway and someone gets hurt, let\u2019s not waste any social resources like ambulances and hospital care on the driver and his guests. They darn well knew (or should have known) that SUVs have a stability problem. When people make mistakes, they should be held strictly to the consequences, even if that means death. Anything less than such a high standard will impede the adaptation<\/span> and natural selection<\/span> process that the blogger is so in love with. Although he doesn\u2019t say it, he seems to anticipate the emergence of a perfect, flawless human race. Yes, it does sound a bit Hegelian, and vaguely Nazi.<\/p>\n

In a way, though, isn\u2019t this “incentive system” a la Ayn Rand<\/span> a form of reverse social engineering? Weren\u2019t the Nazi\u2019s the ultimate social engineers … at least in the old-fashioned sense of social engineering. And perhaps the modern form, with it\u2019s emphasis on unchecked self-interest and exploitation of old-fashioned civility, isn\u2019t all that different. What goes around comes around.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d suggest that the conservatives start worrying more about the modern form of social engineering than about the costs of saving pandas and helping overweight humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOCIAL ENGINEERING: I did a web search on the term \u201csocial engineering\u201d the other day. Back in the late 19th and early 20th Century, SOCIAL ENGINEERING was the concept that intelligent planning and centralized controls could be used to change society into a kinder and gentler thing, where people could lead better lives. Social Engineering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}