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.

Should we fear hackers? Intention is at the heart of this discussion.

I get hired by companies to hack into their systems and break into their physical facilities to find security holes. Our success rate is 100%; we've always found a hole.

Of course I'm sure half the people there hate me and half the people like me

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

Choosing a hard-to-guess, but easy-to-remember password is important!

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.