The Psychology Behind Successful Attacks

An Open Source Lab for Simulating Human Exploitation via Social Engineering

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Most security tools are designed to protect systems. Pretexta is designed to understand why humans fail.
Modern social engineering attacks do not rely on malware or exploits. They rely on pretexting, authority, urgency, trust, and cognitive bias.

Pretexta was created as an open source simulation lab to model how thesepsychological attack techniques work in practice — in a controlled, ethical, and defensive environment. This project focuses on learning, experimentation, and community research, not on generating real-world attacks.

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What Pretexta Is

• A defensive social engineering simulation lab
• A platform to study human decision-making under pressure
• An interactive environment for experimenting with pretexting techniques
• A community-driven, fully open source research project

All scenarios are fictional, self-contained, and designed for defense and education only.

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Features

• Real-Time AI Chat: Interact with dynamic AI personas (e.g., "The Urgent CEO", "Angry IT Support") powered by Groq (Llama 3), Gemini, or Claude.
• Adaptive Psychology: Scenarios are built on Cialdini's 6 Principles of Influence (Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, etc.).
• Interactive AI Lab: A WhatsApp-style chat interface where you must defend against active pretexting attempts.
• Win/Loss Detection: The AI automatically detects if you've been compromised (shared credentials, clicked links) or successfully defended the asset.
• Mission Logs: Detailed history of your simulations with scoring and analysis.
• Quiz Mode: Assess your theoretical knowledge of social engineering tactics.
• Bilingual Support: Full support for English and Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia).

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How a Typical Demo Works

1. A participant enters a simulated social engineering scenario
2. An AI-driven attacker applies psychological pressure in real time
3. The participant makes decisions under realistic constraints
4. The system detects compromise or resistance
5. A post-mission psychological debrief explains why the outcome occurred

This flow is intentionally designed to fit a short, repeatable demo format suitable for live Demo Lab environments.

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Quick Start (Demo Environment)

Docker (Recommended)

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/dalpan/Pretexta.git
cd Pretexta

# Build and Start
make build
make up

# Seed Initial Data
make seed

# Access the Lab
# Frontend: http://localhost:3000
# Backend: http://localhost:8001
# Login: soceng / Cialdini@2025!

LLM Configuration (Required)

To use the AI Chat features, you need an API key. We recommend Groq for the best speed/free-tier experience.

1. Get a Key:
   • Groq: console.groq.com (Recommended)
   • Google Gemini: aistudio.google.com
   • Anthropic: console.anthropic.com
2. Configure:
   • Go to Settings in the Pretexta Dashboard.
   • Select your provider (e.g., Groq).
   • Paste your API Key and click Save.

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Tech Stack

• Frontend: React 18, Tailwind CSS, Lucide Icons, Axios
• Backend: Python FastAPI, LangChain, Motor (MongoDB Async)
• AI/LLM: LangChain integration with Groq (Llama 3), Gemini Pro, Claude Sonnet
• Database: MongoDB

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Contributions

We welcome contributions! Please see our CONTRIBUTING.md for details on how to add new scenarios, quizzes, or features.

Adding a New Scenario

You can add new scenarios easily by creating a YAML file in data/sample/:

type: ai_challenge
title: "The Fake Recruiter"
persona:
  name: "Sarah Jenkins"
  role: "Recruiter at TechCorp"
  goal: "Get user to open malicious resume PDF"
  style: "Professional, Friendly, slightly pushy"

Then run make seed to import it.

Open Source & Community

Pretexta is fully open source and intended for:

• Security researchers exploring human-layer attack surfaces
• Educators teaching social engineering defense
• Hackers interested in psychological attack modeling
• Contributors who want to extend scenarios or analysis methods

We actively encourage:

• Scenario contributions
• Research experiments
• Critical feedback
• Forks and extensions

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Ethics & Scope

Pretexta is designed strictly for defensive education and research.

• No real-world targeting
• No phishing infrastructure
• No data harvesting
• No automation for live attacks

All simulations are fictional and isolated from real systems.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

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Pretexta "Understanding why social engineering works — before attackers do."