Humans are full of loopholes

Leif 2022-04-19 09:02:26

If Benjamin used social engineering to successfully trick Investigator Hannah to achieve his goals, then the entire Who Am I movie is a tool used by the director to trick the audience. By telling Benjamin's story, after a series of interludes and guidance (Benjamin's suspected personality split, whose wound on his hand belongs, a small number of lies that have been seen through, sugar cube tricks suggest a hidden third, flashing memory images, etc.), the use of It is the audience's cognition, curiosity and instinctive reaction, and the director's goal is achieved through the coexistence of rationality, sensibility and logic of "people" - to let the audience fall into the truth trap.

"Humans are the biggest vulnerability."

The vulnerability of human beings is also the most important link in social engineering attacks. The concept of social engineering (Social Engineering) was put forward by the number one hacker Kevin Mitnick in the book "The Art of Deception", which is a kind of psychological weakness, instinctive response, curiosity, trust, greed of "human nature". etc. to deceive, harm. In layman's terms, it is to take advantage of people's weaknesses to make people fooled.

Social engineering can drive someone to follow your will to do what you want:
1. By giving the target individual a direct "direction".
2. Tailoring a perceived (by fabrication) particular situation and environment for an individual.

The director knows that the audience and everyone else believes in what they see, and people can only see what they want to see. Therefore, the director obeys the audience and satisfies the desires of the audience. Since the audience is so obsessed with the truth, let them find it.

However, the belief that we have the so-called truth often leads us to misinterpret it and lead us astray. Like Hannah, why is her last honeyed smile, because she thinks she knows the truth beyond the truth, but is that true?

As the lead cybercrime investigator, Hannah doesn't trust hearsay stories lightly, she trusts only evidence. This may be career driven, or it may be her always rigorous character. So even if she didn't fully believe the story told by Benjamin, she inadvertently noticed the 'details' in Benjamin's hands, so she went to investigate, and after several searches, she came to the conclusion that Benjamin was a split personality, and CLAY was simply a person.

After letting Benjamin go, she used four sugar cubes to deduce that there might be three accomplices behind Benjamin. However, judging from her sudden understanding of something, she seemed to have overturned her previous inferences, and instead believed that Benjamin had fooled everyone by playing a good magic trick.

Hannah believes that she has found the truth, while the liar himself believes that he has become the hero of his dreams, surrounded by beautiful women, like a superhero, saving his companions and solving the police's problems.

At the beginning, Benjamin was like Max's younger brother. He admired Max's leadership and shaking ability, so he was willing to obey (Maybe Benjamin subconsciously believed that before every hero becomes a superhero, he must meet a life mentor and experience some Difficulties and setbacks can complete the hero transformation). Later, Benjamin stabbed a big basket, and every member was scared to death, including Max. At this time, Benjamin was pushed out and became the heroic savior.

He used social engineering attacks, made up stories to ask Hannah for help, and continued to use inducement techniques to improve the credibility and integrity of the entire story, making Hannah step by step and unconsciously accomplish what Benjamin wanted her to accomplish. In the end, he changed his name and escaped successfully. When he boarded the ship and looked into the distance, Benjamin was completely different from before. He had always been a man of his own accord and was inferior to others, but now he has a straight back and looks into the distance with a confident and scheming face. What is he thinking at the moment, maybe he is thinking, I am really a talent for riding a horse.

Is Benjamin a real split personality, maybe, maybe not, this is a game for the audience. Maybe Benjamin is a schizophrenic who is so ill with Ritalin that he doesn't even know it, or maybe he really is a high-IQ cybercriminal genius who is well versed in social engineering.

You can dig out what you think is the truth based on the director's 'information' in the film. But you'll never know if that's the truth, or the 'truth' that the director is leading you to believe.

PS The sequelae of watching this film is to stick the notebook with the camera and the pad with stickers; do not open any links at will; you can maintain curiosity, but don't be overly curious, because curiosity will kill the cat.

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Extended Reading

Who Am I quotes

  • Benjamin: MRX has three rules: First: no system is safe. Second: Aim for the impossible. Third: Have fun in cyberspace and meat space.