Hackers competing in a social engineering contest at the Defcon conference here on Friday were able to trick random employees at 10 major U.S. tech, oil, and retail companies into giving them sensitive information over the phone that could be used in targeted computer attacks on the companies."Every single company, if it was a security audit, would have failed," Christopher Hadnagy, operations manager for Offensive Security, a training and penetration testing company, told CNET after the first day of the contest, which wraps up Saturday and targets BP, Shell, Google, PG&E, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Ford, Coke, and Pepsi. "Not one company shut us down, although certain employees within the company did. But we (participants) were able to call right back and get another employee that was more willing to comply."The organizers declined to offer specific comments about any one of the companies targeted by the contest or say which companies are faring better or worse than the others. But they said they'd release a report with aggregated information in a few weeks.

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