Submission + - Women Less Likely to Fall Prey to Pretexting? (infoworld.com)
snydeq writes: "Of the 135 people Fortune 500 employees targeted by social engineering hackers in a recent contest only five refused to give up any corporate information whatsoever, and they shared one glaring commonality: all five were women. The contest, which transpired over two days at this year's DefCon, pitted social engineering hackers against employees at 17 major corporations. Sitting in a plexiglass booth, with an audience watching, contestants called up company employees, trying to get them to give up information. Among the more successful tactics: pretending to be insiders who were doing audits or consultants filling out surveys. And if contestants tried to get employees to visit an outside Web site, they always succeeded, eventually. Still the five women performed admirably, said contest organizer Chris Hadnagy. 'Within the first 15 seconds, they were like, "This doesn't seem right to me," and they ended the call,' Hadnagy said. Contributing to their suspicions may have been the fact that all of the contestants were men. 'I think inherently women are more cautious when guys are involved,' he said."