Please Note: Lab experiences do not require registration and are available on a first-come, first-served basis. The room will be cleared after each session to accommodate the next group.

Social engineering not just a specialized skill used by elite hackers, professional con artists, or unnervingly charismatic strangers. In reality, the same few psychological vulnerabilities show up everywhere: in negotiations, job interviews, sales pitches, security breaches, party tricks, and everyday conversations…

And YOU can use them, too.

In this interactive session, magician and social-engineering educator Brian Brushwood reveals four psychological backdoors that can make people more likely to trust, comply, disclose, and cooperate. You will see each principle demonstrated, learn why it works, and practice using it through safe, low-stakes exercises with other attendees.

These are the tricks that can be used by good guys and bad to convince, and build rapport quickly, lower resistance, and make an unlikely request feel surprisingly reasonable.

By learning how these techniques feel from the inside, attendees will become better at using influence deliberately, and better at recognizing when someone is using it on them.

No previous social-engineering experience is required. Just bring a willingness to talk to strangers, learn a magic trick or two, and discover how alarmingly hackable human beings really are.

Brian Brushwood

Brian Brushwood has spent 25 years teaching millions of people how deception works: first as a touring magician, then as creator/host of Scam School / Scam Nation, host of National Geographic’s Hacking the System, creator of The Modern Rogue, and host of World’s Greatest Con. His work focuses on scams, magic, persuasion, social engineering, and the mechanics of trust: how it is built, exploited, defended, and rehearsed. Through Scam School and Scam Nation, Brian spent nearly two decades turning ordinary non-deceivers into capable ethical deceivers, helping them understand cons and persuasion from the inside. Brian has delivered keynotes to audiences of thousands and recently developed an experimental offense-to-defense social engineering curriculum, piloted at Clemson University with CISO John Hoyt.