Social engineering is using manipulation, influence and deception to get a person, a trusted insider within an organization, to comply with a request, and the request is usually to release information or to perform some sort of action item that benefits that attacker.

I was addicted to hacking, more for the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the seduction of adventure; not for stealing, or causing damage or writing computer viruses.

I use Mac. Not because it's more secure than everything else - because it is actually less secure than Windows - but I use it because it is still under the radar. People who write malicious code want the greatest return on their investment, so they target Windows systems. I still work with Windows in virtual machines.

The key to social engineering is influencing a person to do something that allows the hacker to gain access to information or your network.

I get hired to hack into computers now and sometimes it's actually easier than it was years ago.

When I was in prison, a Colombian drug lord, offered me $5 million in cash to manipulate a computer system so that he would be released. I turned him down.

Both social engineering and technical attacks played a big part in what I was able to do. It was a hybrid. I used social engineering when it was appropriate, and exploited technical vulnerabilities when it was appropriate.