Episode 137: Rosa Rowles - Social Engineer
From Layer 8 Podcast by Layer 8 Conference
March 9, 2026 · 34 min · Season 6 · Episode 6
About this episode
Rosa Rowles discusses her experience as a social engineer and the techniques she uses in her work.
Rosa Rowles has spent more than six years as a social engineer, mainly performing vishing calls. She reports that she has made more than 20,000 calls in her career. In this episode, she talks about using OSINT to build a pretext and how she chooses favorite pretexts to fit into a target's own bias. She also explains amygdala hijacking and how the right pretext can put someone's mind into a state where they might not make the best choices. Rosa will be presenting at BSides Tampa on May 16 at 2 pm!
People in this episode
Guest: Rosa Rowles
Topics covered
- social engineering
- vishing
- OSINT
- pretexting
- amygdala hijacking
- decision making
Keywords
- social engineer
- vishing calls
- OSINT
- pretext
- amygdala hijacking
- decision making
- BSides Tampa
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: BSides Tampa
Places: Tampa
More episodes of Layer 8 Podcast
- Episode 148: Dr. Abbie Maroño · June 1, 2026 · 44 min
- Episode 147: John Bejakovic · May 25, 2026 · 43 min
- Episode 146: Social Engineering Capture the Flag at Layer 8 · May 18, 2026 · 28 min
- Episode 145: Brett Redman of OSINT Industries · May 11, 2026 · 41 min
- Episode 144: Gunther Royen and Scott McLean · May 5, 2026 · 34 min
- Episode 143: OSINT Keynote, Training and Mistakes! · April 27, 2026 · 46 min
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