Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Physiological Factors of Lying

How can we effectively tell when a person is lying?

If it is someone we are close to, then we likely already have their base line personality/characteristics and can detect (even if we are not always aware of it) when they verge from those characteristics telling us that something is off.

Most people do this daily with their kids, spouses and close friends.  This is why many moms just “know” when their children are not being truthful.

Besides having a good baseline there are other factors that can help us recognize when someone is trying to hide something or conceal certain information.  These factors are micro and subtle facial expressions.

But, what exactly does the human body do when a person is being deceptive?

How can we accurately gauge a person’s deception.  For years, we have used psychological markers such as heart rate, perspiration and general anxiety to measure deception, but with advanced technology we are now focusing on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to delineate how our bodies react to the act of lying.

fMRI’s measure the cell activity of the brain by tracking blood flow.  This new concept “shows” when a person lies by highlighting the changes in their brain activity.

We have blogged on the importance and relevance of fMRI’s in the past.  Scienceline.org has recently added to the commentary on this technology.  They state that Joel Huizenga, the CEO of No Lie MRI claims that his fMRI machines are able to “detect deception” with 90-99% accuracy.

“If this technology was accepted, people would have to stop telling lies,” Huizenga affirms.  fMRI’s have revealed a lot of new, exciting, and useful information that was previously unattainable.  However, the research is still preliminary and many scientists believe that even with this technology we still don’t understand how the brain processes many things.

Steven Hsiao, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University and one such specialist verifies, “The more complex those aspects of perception and cognition, the more difficult it is to isolate them.”

Huizenga believes that it is a money issue and not the science offered up by fMRI’s that keeps this research from being widely used and accepted as deception detection technology.  He states,

“There is huge opposition to this. It’s because people are fearful of the government sticking their heads into an MRI and asking if they paid their taxes. They don’t even want people to know that anyone’s heard of it. People want to be able to lie.”

What is your opinion of Huizenga’s perspective on the fMRI?

Do you believe it is just a matter of money and not the scientific results that keep the fMRI from being a scientifically  accepted deception detection method?

The Powell Family Tragedy

Utah mother of two Susan Powell disappeared in December of 2009 after her husband Josh claimed he had taken their young sons camping in sub-zero temperatures only to return to find his wife missing.

Josh Powell, who had been under severe scrutiny for several years over the disappearance of Susan, had his first in depth television interview late last year. We blogged about a portion of the interview, in which Josh claimed he knew nothing of his wife’s disappearance and readers commented on many red flags and hot spots they saw.

This story took a dramatic turn this past weekend when Josh set fire to his own house with him and his two sons inside, killing all three. Before he took his own life and the life of his sons, he left an emotional voicemail on several family member’s answering machines.

Susan’s sister, Denise Cox had a television interview shortly after the tragedy where she discussed her sister’s missing person case and the brutal murder of her two nephews. The interview can be seen below. It is evident that Denise is quite emotional about the subject.

Denise is also an excellent example of someone who has shifty eyes but is not being deceptive. Notice how she often looks around- sometimes one could mistake this as being deceptive, but this seems to be part of Denise’s baseline behavior.

Remember, lack of eye contact is the biggest myth about liars. In fact, eye gaze has little to do with detecting deception.

Successful Introductions … Getting Results

Happy New Year Everybody. Sorry I have been slack with blog posts this year, family and work are keeping me busy at the moment.

So less about the excuses and more about the doing :) When I speak to people about Social Engineering there are many common themes, most common being how to handle failure and how to go about being the person / group you are impersonating. The other one is how you make that initial introduction, and start getting your manipulation fu on. Its a good question, and one I used to struggle with when I first got started.

I would say its pretty common to be nervous when approaching someone, especially when you have some form of manipulation planned. I don’t want to offend anyone, but this is what dating is initially right? You want that person of interest to be spell bound by you, so how do you make that first step without totally destroying any chance of success? Well my clue is in the aspect of dating.

When I was researching Hypnosis, NLP and the wonderful world of Mentalism I came across the work of PUA (Pick Up Artist) Ross Jeffries. Now I am no huge fan, and I think some of this stuff from the PUA community is border line on the ethical and moral front for me, but I am sure it works and gets the results if thats your thing. Anyway, one of the things they talk about is how to introduce yourself to that person of interest. This technique applies for the dating game, if your looking to try out some magic and mentalism, as well as engaging in some social engineering. Obviously its important to have context, and timing and the place is crucial, but the approach is to Compliment, Introduce, Question (CIQ).

A simple example could be as follows: You look like a helpful set of guys, my name is Dale and I started here today. I left my badge inside, would you help me get back in please?

Its simple, concise and does the job. It is also useful to use language that implies compliance. Phrases that include, could you, would you, can you etc have a form that implies of course we all know you can meet our request, but its not very often you get a smart Alec that doesn’t want to comply.

Short but sweet post, but something for you to try out in any situation where you need to introduce yourself, remember never miss an opportunity to use the power of persuasion.