Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In 1975 in Los Angeles, young Kevin Mitnick had his first ever experience of social engineering. When riding buses he noticed that all drivers used the same special hole punch to verify tickets. Under the guise of doing a school project, he asked one bus driver how he could buy one. Social engineering is a hacking technique used to get others to reveal information that they shouldn’t in order to carry out a hack. This was just the first of hundreds that Kevin would carry out in his lifetime and gave him a taste of what a single person could do - in this case, through trickery, local knowledge and dumpster diving, it was riding the buses for free!
In 1975 in Los Angeles, young Kevin Mitnick had his first ever experience of social engineering. When riding buses he noticed that all drivers used the same special hole punch to verify tickets. Under the guise of doing a school project, he asked one bus driver how he could buy one. Social engineering is a hacking technique used to get others to reveal information that they shouldn’t in order to carry out a hack. This was just the first of hundreds that Kevin would carry out in his lifetime and gave him a taste of what a single person could do - in this case, through trickery, local knowledge and dumpster diving, it was riding the buses for free!
