We often assume that scams only work on uninformed or careless people. In practice, many victims are highly educated and analytical, including engineers, managers and security-aware users.
In this interactive workshop, participants will examine real examples of modern scams and impersonation attacks: phishing messages, social-engineering scenarios and AI-generated deepfake voice/video impersonations. The audience will be asked to judge which cases are real and which are fake, followed by a live demonstration of how such an attack can be created.
The session focuses on how attackers actually think: they do not break computers first, they exploit trust, urgency, familiarity and routine behavior. The goal is not to teach technical cybersecurity, but to understand why these attacks work in everyday life and how ordinary decision-making habits can be manipulated.
Participants will leave with practical ways to recognize manipulation attempts and simple strategies to protect themselves and their families.

Lecturer: Aurel George Proorocu

George is a cybersecurity and AI specialist with over 15 years of experience, moving from hands-on technical roles to leading engineering teams in security-critical environments. His work focuses on social-engineering attacks, fraud and how AI is transforming them - not only through deepfake voice and video, but by dramatically increasing scale, automation and lowering the skill barrier for attackers through AI-assisted tooling.
He is the co-creator of an online introductory cybersecurity course that has reached more than 150,000 learners worldwide, and he regularly gives talks about real-world scams and how attackers manipulate people rather than systems. His goal is to make security understandable and practical for non-technical audiences.