Understanding Social Engineering Through the Eyes of a Furry Adversary

Even the most secure systems have one consistent vulnerability: people. As cybersecurity professionals, we spend our days hardening networks, securing endpoints, and writing detection rules, but we still get tripped up by the same tactics my cat uses to get fed early or steal my chair. Why? Because social engineering is rooted in human psychology, not code, and attackers know exactly how to exploit it.

In this talk, we’ll take a playful but insightful dive into the psychology of social engineering, using everyday examples from life with a manipulative cat. We'll break down tactics like pretexting, baiting, urgency, and authority, showing how they mirror common cyberattacks like phishing, smishing, and impersonation scams. From an attacker crafting a spear-phishing email to my cat pretending he’s starving (again), the principles are remarkably the same.

This session is designed for technical pros who understand the tech but want to better defend against the human layer of risk. You’ll leave with practical insights into how attackers gather context (often via OSINT), build believable narratives, and bypass technical controls by targeting people, plus a few laughs and a healthy respect for feline threat actors.

Because if you can’t outsmart your cat, how are you going to outsmart a hacker?