Social Engineering (security) - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In the film Hackers, the protagonist used pretexting when he asked a security guard for the telephone number to a TV station's modem while posing as an important executive.
• In Jeffrey Deaver's book The Blue Nowhere, social engineering to obtain confidential information is one of the methods used by the killer, Phate, to get close to his victims.
• In the movie Live Free or Die Hard, Justin Long is seen pretexting that his father is dying from a heart attack to have a On-Star Assist representative start what will become a stolen car.
• In the movie Sneakers, one of the characters poses as a low level security guard's superior in order to convince him that a security breach is just a false alarm.
• In the movie The Thomas Crown Affair, one of the characters poses over the telephone as a museum guard's superior in order to move the guard away from his post.
• In the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever, Bond is seen gaining entry to the Whyte laboratory with a then-state-of-the-art card-access lock system by "tailgating". He merely waits for an employee to come to open the door, then posing himself as a rookie at the lab, fakes inserting a non-existent card while the door is unlocked for him by the employee.
• In the television show Rockford Files, The character Jim Rockford used pretexting often in his private investigation work.
• In the popular TV Show The Mentalist, protagonist Patrick Jane often uses Pretexting to trick criminals into confessing to the crimes they committed.