Hacking Humans
Bittner, Carrigan, and Varmazis on social engineering, phishing, fraud, and the human side of attacks — Catch of the Day stories, scam analysis, and interviews with awareness practitioners.
- Hosts
- Dave Bittner, Joe Carrigan, Maria Varmazis
- Network
- N2K Networks
- Status
- Active · since 2018
- Rating
- ★★★★☆ (4/5)
- Level
- Beginner
- Language
- English
Listen on
Bittner, Carrigan, and Varmazis on social engineering, phishing, fraud, and the human side of attacks — Catch of the Day stories, scam analysis, and interviews with awareness practitioners.
Who it's for
Awareness program leads, fraud teams, and curious listeners who want a steady drip of social-engineering case studies. The show's Catch of the Day format — listener-submitted phishing emails dissected on air — is its highest-leverage format.
Who it's not for
Specialists wanting current AI-driven social-engineering tradecraft (deepfake voice clones, LLM-assisted spearphish); the show is moving in that direction but is not the most current source. Also pace is brisk and conversational, not deep.
Key takeaways
- Catch of the Day's archive is the cleanest collection of real-world phishing and pretexting examples available in audio form; useful as awareness-training material.
- Joe Carrigan's Johns Hopkins / ISI background gives the show technical credibility that pure-awareness shows lack.
- Maria Varmazis joining as third host has freshened the format and broadened the international scope.
Notes
Pair with Practical Social Engineering (Gray) for the print companion and with Smashing Security for the adjacent news register. The show's listener-submission model means the quality of any given episode depends on what arrived in the inbox; back-catalog dipping is the right strategy. Recommended for anyone running an awareness program.