A Human to Know: Rachel Tobac
Conversations with the people who are changing the way we live our lives online.
When Rachel Tobac was a student studying applied behavioral analysis and neuroscience at Allegheny College, she trained a rat in a lab to press a lever when it heard the rapper T-Pain, but not the rapper Ludacris. It was this experience, among other things, she says, that helped her become a winner of DEFCON’s Social Engineering Capture the Flag competition (SECTF) in 2016 and 2017.
“The things I was doing to train the rat are exactly the same things that I do on the phone when I’m vishing,” she says, referring to the social engineering practice of voice phishing, which participants are asked to do in front of a live audience during the DEFCON competition. “When the person on the other line is telling me something I need to infiltrate their company, my tone will be positive and I’ll reinforce them. If I’m not getting information that will help me hack them, I’ll use the strategy of extinction — I won’t give them positive acknowledgment for information that I already know, or information that won’t get me closer to hacking their company.”
This post has moved. To continue reading, please visit https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/humans-of-cybersecurity/blog/human-to-know-Rachel-Tobac
