Social Engineer: Pen-testing with a Little Drama
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Written by Paul Jerimy

January 7, 2019

Fiction | Pentesting | Technothriller

Social Engineer book cover

MY Reaction

Ian Sutherland’s Social Engineer is a great short read that reminds me of Kevin Mitnick’s memoirs about his early hacking shenanigans. While I’m not a short story / novella kind of guy, I wanted to read this before hitting the rest of the Brody Taylor books. That said, I enjoyed this novella. It got my interest quickly and was very descriptive for such a short story.

The “hacking” ideas were well executed and realistic. Obviously they’re a little dramatized and the protagonist was lucky here and there, but that’s the point of a story. I found it easy to root for the protagonist and found him to be a good avatar for what I imagine a professional pentester might be.

I’m glad the romantic threads had a point, since I wasn’t really looking for that from a techno thriller. There was a soft bit of ethical dilemma in there in the form of anti animal cruelty, but it definitely felt like a part of a story and not grand standing.


Recommendation

I highly recommend this novel and the subsequent sequels to security professionals as a nice bit of wish fulfilling but realistic fantasy. It is also written in a way that I suspect not IT people can really enjoy. I would be very interested to hear what professional pentesters think.

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