This year's Defcon event will feature a contest that asks social engineers to infiltrate target companies. But the challenge is only one part of a large mission to get people thinking about social engineering.

How strong is your schmooze? That is the question participants in an upcoming contest at this year's Defcon event will attempt to answer at the end of July. The Social Engineering CTF (capture-the-flag contest) is sponsored by the group that runs the website social-engineer.org and will ask contestants to gather information and then plan a realistic and appropriate attack vector, according to Chris Hadnagy, one of the site's founders.

"We thought 'How can we showcase social engineering skills and not go over that line of what is ethical and moral?'" explained Hadnagy.

According to the rules of the contest, each social engineer/contestant is emailed a dossier with the name and URL of a "target" company. Before the conference, the contestants are allowed to gather any type of information they can get from the internet. No phone calls, emailing or contacting the company in any way before the Defcon event is allowed.

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