About:
The Art of Attack: Most People Are Puppets – Learn to Control the Strings by Maxie Reynolds is a cybersecurity book focusing on social-engineering. Ms. Reynolds is an outstanding social-engineer, published author and… an ex-stuntwoman.
- 304 pages
- Publisher : Wiley
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1119805465
By rating for The Art of Attack – 4
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More books by Maxie Reynolds*
Thoughts:
I was very excited when I bought this book after hearing the author on an episode of DarkNet Diaries, I especially wanted to know more about the underwater datacenters. Unfortunately, this book only slightly touch that subject, but it is an interesting look into the social-engineer’s mindset.
The Art of Attack by Maxie Reynolds focuses on the discipline one needs in order to go through the “attack cycle”. Gather intel, find a pretext, find ways to approach without raising suspicions, and, just as important, how to get out.
Ms. Reynolds is super-professional and has a wide array of fascinating stories. She treats her career as a social engineer in an ethical manner, emphasizing scope, reporting, and doing right by her clients. She introduces her “Social Engineering Framework”, which is a systematic approach to the job instead of winging it as well as the Attackers Mindset (AM) which keeps here focus on the mission at hand.
There was very little new information in the book for me, but it was interesting to read about the industry from a woman’s perspective. Her stories about physically getting into highly secured buildings and areas are engaging, and are much more interesting than “run nmap“, for example.
A lot of what she talks about is common sense and psychology 101. Fooling people is not that difficult, and once you fooled them it’s almost child’s play to let them keep digging their own demise. I also found the book to be repetitive, which is fine if you want to enforce information but I didn’t think much of it needs enforcing.
But I’ve been doing this for a few decades so the value to those new to the information security industry, or physical security, will find this book much more valuable than me. If the book was anything like her interview on DarkNet Diaries, I would have gladly paid twice as much.
Buy The Art of Attack from Amazon.com*
More books by Maxie Reynolds*
Zohar — Man of la Book
Disclaimer: I bought this book
*Amazon links point to an affiliate account, the money is usually spent on books
