Social Engineering Special - Negative Manipulation 01 • blog.network-sec

Power vs Control. In this Social Engineering special, we compare negative manipulation tactics that occur in relationships, the workplace, religious- and other social communities.

Disclaimer

This article is intended as psychological and psycho-social background knowledge. It’s not intended as a “guide to unhappiness” or as a “how to make people obediant through misery”. In fact, we want quite the opposite.

Intro

In this article we’re trying to give a brief overview of two very common categories of negative manipulation. Although they’re diametrically opposite, they often occur as a mix.

That’s because, outside of a planed RedTeam Engagement, these types of manipulation are the result of anger, an expression of aggression, sometimes arising from a feeling of helplesness by the perpetrator, who in the beginning “only” wanted to get his will - but failed to achieve it with his limited options, communicative skills or resources.

Sometimes the cause might be a feeling like:“You’re completely wrong. Do what I say, then it will be correct and work well!“. - We think it’s extremely important to understand that. Cause such an underlying assumption might be fully correct. However, it will hardly ever justify the “cost” and never feel Ok for the victim.

This means, psychologically speaking, manipulators often act without concious intention, but are driven by their inner aggression, lose self-control and later often try to downplay the events, feeling guilt and shame about their own actions, or trying to find reasons to justify them.

Let’s compare the two. We only list bullet points, we could go into great detail on each. However, we rather want to give a general overview and introduction into the topic.

Power Seeking Manipulation

Common methods:

Denial of promotion, if deserved
Denial of raise
Unneccessary escalation of descisions to higher up ranks
Denial of trust
Harassment
Discrimination
Display of wealth or power (“flexing”, more complementary)
Mobbing
Intimidation
Gaslighting
Using personal information against a victim
Doxxing
Ghosting
Canceling
Ostracism - Talking about the victim while he / she is present
SWATing, triggering a house search or arrest, in general abusing the legal system

A Word on SWATing

Note that in Germany and many other countries there’s a set of laws prohibiting actions like SWATing or general abuse of the legal system (StGb 187, 238, 240, 344, 374) with up to several years of prison as punishment. Aparently, SWATing has become more common, especially to live streamers. It’s extremely dangerous and has caused injuries and deaths.

See: https://youtu.be/zAmJo6Zn2dA?si=1vpq1Eai1YyzFjDK&t=669

Other Tactics

Not all power-seeking manipulators use the same tactics, and some methods may be more subtle or nuanced than others. Intended manipulation is never acceptable behavior and can have serious negative consequences on the victim’s mental health and well-being, career and social status.

Power VS Control

While power seeking manipulation aims to disable the victim, completely remove the victim from the picture, control seeking manipulation does almost the opposite, aiming to keep the victim nearby, but under control.

Control Seeking Manipulation

Common methods:

Isolation (so the victim can’t tell anyone)
Railroading
Surveillance
Fear mongering, FUD
Retaliation
Legal action, also threats or implication of those
General punishment
Gaslighting
Schedules and deadlines
Unclear and opposing orders
Intransparency
Deprivation of corrective or encouriging feedback and praise
Missing or false attribution of success
Exclusion from planing actions
Limitation or exclusion from physical access to certain areas or physical contact (that would be normal otherwise)
Deprivation of normal social interaction and empathy
Limitation or deprivation of work material access and work-related education
Partly or full denial of financial means
Assignment of unnessary or “endless” / repetitive tasks
Frequent, unannounced testing or tests unknown to the person being tested
Lying, defamation, rumors
Overtime with the sole intention to break the will of the victim
Denial of breaks
Stalking / Cyberstalking
Moving goalposts / carrot on a stick
Ridicule and laughing
Requirement for public display of certain, personal characteristics

Example

A German Supermarket chain at one point asked female workers to carry armlets that could be visually identified via security cameras, showing the woman is on her period. The management was angry about too many toilet breaks.

Stuff like that also is part of the dark history of many countries and cultures.

Outlook

This introduction on Negative Manipulation should give you a quick overview (and a cold shiver). We’ll continue the series in a while and then go into more detail.

With all our articles about Psychological Manipulation we aim to help victims of such tactics. These days, Bad Actors use these techniques and tactics, outside of a legal context like Redteaming or Pentesting, for their own purposes. Thereby attackers are often crossing ethical borders, for reasons like Fraud, Blackmailing or just to put people under pressure, leaving their victims without resolution.

We provide detailed analysis of these techniques in hopes to create awareness, to help people understand what maybe has happened to them and to protect them against Social Engineering attacks.