[HN Gopher] Let's Get Physical
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Let's Get Physical
Author : MBCook
Score : 81 points
Date : 2026-03-05 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (m4iler.cloud)
(TXT) w3m dump (m4iler.cloud)
| illithid0 wrote:
| From one red teamer to red teamer to another, glad your first
| assessment went so well and you had a great time. My first
| physical pentest made me want to never sit in front of a terminal
| again.
|
| People, as we like to say, are not paid enough to care. At-will
| employment, company-sponsored healthcare, etc. have employees so
| focused on their own wellbeing that protecting "the company" is
| the last thing on their minds, and I can't really blame them.
| That lady who you barged in on may very well have just been used
| to micromanaging jerks doing it to her all the time, so she has
| to seem busy.
|
| Physical security, in my experience, comes down to giving people
| something to protect which actually benefits them to protect. All
| the technical controls in the building can fail and one person
| with enough skin in the game can kill an intrusion attempt in
| seconds.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I want to hear about your first assessment please! (Former
| pentester here. I never got to do a physical red team but
| always daydreamed about it.)
| illithid0 wrote:
| My first assessment was honestly as anticlimactic as OP's.
|
| We had to break into a particular unit of a multi-tenant
| office building. The client wanted us to focus on social
| engineering, but if we were able to do that, to move on to
| testing if anyone would see it as suspicious if someone was
| messing with doors and stuff.
|
| So my partner walked up to the reception desk with a toolbox
| and a clipboard, claiming to be there for an off-schedule
| inspection of the elevator fire suppression system. Signed
| the guestbook with no formal verification, walked into the
| office area, and sat down to plug his laptop into an ethernet
| drop.
|
| Meanwhile, after he texted me to let me know he was in, I
| took the stairs up to a door that led into the back of the
| target unit and just had to use a traveler's hook to pull
| door latch open. No guard plates or anything in the way.
|
| Then I walked around in my business casual outfit until I
| found what looked like an IT closet, waited for a time when
| no one was in the hall with me, and used an under-the-door
| tool to pop it open. All their network equipment was in there
| along with spare laptops and an unlocked IT admin machine on
| a desk.
|
| :)
| simlevesque wrote:
| I love pentesting stories. Great blog post, I was smiling while
| reading most of it.
|
| It reminded me of Deviant Ollam's stories such has his elevator
| security talk w/ Howard Payne:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1vD5_b5I
| totallygeeky wrote:
| Pentesting seems like a hoot, love to see these stories!
| jgilias wrote:
| Many moons ago I worked a job that involved physical on-premise
| installations of different equipment. That's when I learned that
| for access all that's needed is often a toolbox, an attitude that
| you belong there, and a friendly hi to the security guy if you
| stumble upon one. Not always (and then you actually being
| authorised helps), but often enough.
| nathan_douglas wrote:
| Great stuff. I love that there's this kind of modern noir tone to
| the writing.
|
| > I wanted to try and see if we could bypass the door entirely,
| and that's where the canned air comes in. If you turn a can of
| compressed air upside down, it starts "boiling off cold gases."
| These are not harmful in open spaces, and their temperature is
| well below freezing point even when gaseous. This can trigger a
| sensor that checks for temperature increases: First it sees a
| drop to -50C, thinks "Baby, it's cold outside." Then, the
| temperature starts rising again, and the sensor thinks "Oh,
| temperature going up?! Must be a human!" and opens the door. If
| this works, I will update my Mastodon. If it doesn't, well I can
| still walk in after someone, so it's a finding nonetheless.
|
| I enjoyed it a lot.
| crowfunder wrote:
| This post was so engaging to read, it felt like the best war-
| story you'd randomly hear in the break room. Gotta check out the
| rest of OP's posts.
| wobblyasp wrote:
| Y c a. E b c c ky
| Animats wrote:
| Only the military, and some banks, really take physical security
| seriously.
|
| Someone tried to crash through the main gate at the Camp
| Pendleton Marine Corps Base two years ago. It did not end well
| for them.[1]
|
| Attempt to crash the gate at CIA HQ last year. Drunk driver
| shot.[2]
|
| Attempt to crash the gate at NSA HQ a few years ago. Two drugged-
| out "men dressed in women's clothing". Hit barrier, tried to turn
| around and escape, blocked by guard vehicle. One killed, one
| injured, one guard injured.[3]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPQPKnNj8wM
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/us/shooting-cia-
| headquart...
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K49x05eOowo
| i_think_so wrote:
| There was a story, I think back in the '60s or '70s, about some
| cantankerous old 1-star general who used to personally conduct
| unscheduled inspections. One day he requisitioned a deuce-and-
| a-half (one of those Army trucks with two axles in the back and
| a green canvas covering for the bed, like you've seen in the
| movies) and just crashes it right through the front gate at
| some base.
|
| The private who was manning the guard post at the gate came
| running along behind, probably worried that somebody had been
| hurt in the crash. The general hops out of the cab and unloads
| on the poor kid with both barrels of choice insults about the
| private's parentage, IQ, social standing and hygiene, finishing
| it off with "and why the hell didn't you shoot me?!"
|
| According to legend, that was what the private was punished for
| -- dereliction of duty, failing to shoot the threat to base
| security.
|
| (Obviously, this story is most likely complete BS.)
| surround wrote:
| Reminds me of "Story of a failed pentest"
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20181118010006/https://threader....
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18475438
| i_think_so wrote:
| Anybody else feel a strong urge to copyedit that post?
|
| I make as many typos as the next dog, but really. Don't kids
| today have the Internets to proofread their datas?
| rfw300 wrote:
| I did, and yet I also felt more relaxed reading it than I am
| reading most blog entries posted on here. I didn't feel like I
| had to guard against my time being wasted by vacuous LLM
| fiction.
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