If people think you are doing a legitimate job, you can get away with anything

PWNED Welcome, once again, to PWNED, where each week we share the saga of an organization that couldn’t get out of its own way when it comes to security. This week’s tale comes courtesy of Dahvid Schloss, a professional red teamer who was also involved (as a supervisor) in last week’s story about hackers shoveling snow in order to gain access to restricted areas. This time, it was Schloss himself who broke in, and he used the promise of better connectivity to do it.On one assignment, Schloss was asked to test the physical and network security of a company that was near the top of the Fortune 500 and had a reputation for sponsoring and providing the trophy for an international sporting competition. According to him, there were three copies made of the trophy: one for the winner, one for the host nation itself, and one for the sponsor.

When Schloss was conducting his audit, the location he visited was undergoing construction, creating problems with the office Wi-Fi that all the employees noticed and hated. So when Schloss and his team invaded the place and started probing the wireless network, no one questioned them.