Interview With the Attacker Chris Coyier interviews the attacker who used social engineering techniques to gain access to CSS Tricks and post sensitive personal information to the dark web. Considering how much grief the person on the other end of the conversation caused him, Coyier’s calm, affable demeanor is remarkable.
In the popular imagination and reporting, “hacking” still implies baffling programming trickery and a mysterious other. The reality is most hacks aren’t hacks at all, but old school cons: someone manipulating people and social structures to gain access they shouldn’t have. If you’ve ever been waved past a security desk because you looked like you were “supposed to be there,” you know a little something about how attackers pull this off.