Movie

I queued up the movie "The Yes Men Fix the World" on Netflix and recently had a chance to watch it. Very interesting. I guess if you look for an "info security" slant to the world, then you are bound to find it in some shape or form. I don't believe the term 'social engineering' was used, and I wasn't expecting it, but it was definitely in full effect here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men

Basically two guys have been "pwning" various news (BBC?) and other organizations while pretending to be officials from these large companies. They hold press conferences or meetings, announcing changes to their previous policies on certain issues, and apologizing for their previous stance. They succeed in a very big and sometimes hilarious way. The lesson here is that we are often programmed to be distrustful of unsolicited emails, phone calls and letters, but yet news programs we trust are desperate for a breaking story, and don't fully verify their sources, then bad things can happen. Use your imagination here.

In the case of the movie however, the Yes Men are doing good... in a way. While embarrassing them and dropping jaws on live TV, by drawing attention to the issues, they are successfully able to get some of the orgs to change their public policy by drawing attention to it! Brilliant!

The reason you may not hear much about these events is obvious. What type of organization or news source would openly admit to being tricked in this way and come clean? Thus, news of the event even happening never reaches the public...