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Card Locks Thwarted by Shopping Club Card
hal9000(jr) writes "A recent column ('Social Engineering, the Shoppers' Way') on darkreading.com shows how easy it is for a pen test team to walk into a supposedly secure facility using a shoppers club card because the man trap feature was enabled. Man-traps allow people to enter an outer door but not an inner door similar to ATM kiosks. Once inside, of course, they had the run of the place." Lessons: after writing down your password, eat your sticky notes rather than leave them on the monitor.
Where I work, one of my friends was able to use his shopper's club card to get access to doors he didn't have access to, but I did. I thought the odds of that happening must be astronomical, but apparently it's more common than I thought.
Maybe...
1) Have a photo ID badge that is the only card that can be swiped to get in to the location
2) Install fingerprint readers and cameras for employees to gain entry
3) Lock all doors/locations not in use, & again use ID Badges and fingerprint readers to gain entry
4) Have have all passwords on keychains updated every few minutes
5) And finally, have all employees meet regularly so they know each other by name and by face
Just a thought.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
During the summers as a college job I used to work at an insurance company mailroom which housed a lot of paperwork with very personal information SSN's Medical Info you name it, it was there. My fellow mailroom employees and I used to use CVS shopper cards to gain access to every room in the building when we had forgotten our ID cards at home. Also if you happen to have a shopper card for one grocery store it almost always works at a competing grocery store.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
physical security on most sites is a joke. at my last job i used to work for the u.k government and we had a running competition to see who could get past the security guard station with the most rediculous item. i think that the winner used a tin of sardines that looked nothing like the site pass, but was approximately the same shape. i used to use a cigarette packet most of the time. the mag swipes to enter various blocks did actually look for your pass number on a list of approved numbers however - but a large portion of these were left unlocked or propped open during warm periods. lh
What's most amazing about the story is not that they got "made" second time round but that the woman who did so had left the building, started her car and began to drive away. She remembered what had happened, turned round and came back to shop the two pentesters.
That this happened in this fashion 6 months after the initial (and hugely embarassing) successful penetration reflects both the company's response and the quality of the security awareness training delivered to employees.
How many people, hand on heart, once they're out of the office, would turn round and come back for such a scenario?
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
FTA: We advised them to look for a badge and question individuals who appear to be out of place.
... how about, "Call security and tell them" instead?
... is it wise to test just how much of a criminal they are?
... I'm not going to test that theory. Especially if it's late at night, I'm unarmed, and I'm outnumbered 2:1.
:)
Umm
If you've got someone who's in the middle of a criminal act
While it may be that most data poachers serious enough to break into a building aren't violent criminals
Spending the rest of the night duct-taped in a supply closet just doesn't seem like all that much fun to me
- Roach
Pretty much any type of tools. ESPECIALLY telephone buttsets. My dad worked for a phone company for a long time, and if he had a telephone buttset, nobody every questioned his credentials, or took a second thought about letting him into anywhere in a building. Locked door? Just ask someone to open it for you!
Clipboard. If you got a clip board, people are AFRAID to question you. A coworker of mine visited a major plant once, and the employees mistook him for a CEO or something like that because he had a clipboard.
Suit and tie. People will assume you're a rep of a visiting company and will give you directions.
The best locks in the world won't do any good if someone trusted opens it for an attacker.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
It occurs to me that all this attention to security detail will come to naught in the Star Trek future - they could just use the transporter and beam into any secure area, all they need are the coordinates and blammo, they're in.
I refer you over to Larry Niven's essay, "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation", collected in All The Myriad Ways; you'll probably need to check used bookstores or libraries for it. However, as my memory serves, he characterized that type of teleportation (both recieve-to-device-from-anywhere and send-from-device-to-anywhere) as "you don't get a society, you get a short war".
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
OK here an example from a recent pen test .
Someone setup a test SQL server in the lab with access to the production netowork.
Since it's "just a lab box" the SA password was left blank.
at some point a domain admin logged into this box.
The security team accessed the box with the local SA account.
They got the LSASS password cache.
With that they got the Domain Admin account.
They used that to acccess a DC, got the SAM and used Rainbow crack with a 10gig pre compiled hash DB to get 30 out of 35 domain admin accounts.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Where I work (I'm in an IT dept) we actually have to clean our own stuff unless we're there babysitting the janitors. The janitorial staff comes though once a week while we're there (yeah, a pain in the ass) but other than that we're "it". Only people directly in the IT food chain have physical access to the IT section of the facility (basically it's IT peons -> Director of IT -> VP of Operations -> Pres).
When I worked for the federal government I was located in a SCIF on a military base, and we had our own janitors, MPs, bean counters, etc. and they were all cleared for TS material. We even had a technical librarian and a small library in there!
I do understand that not every company can take such precautions, but your point is noted. Own the place physically with the most innocuous folks and you still own the place. Period.
Actually, checking for a valid ATM card is impossible.
There is no ATM or even credit card standard; it's just a unique identifier linked to your account in the bank's databases. You can use ANY magstripe card you have as an ATM card. Just go to the bank and ask them.
My bank did this for me when I lost my ATM card and needed cash. I went in, showed my picture ID, and they recorded my Student ID card as my ATM card. I could then stick it in an ATM and withdraw money. The guy explained that it was a lot faster than mailing me a new ATM card and that they could do it with any card that wasn't already linked to a bank account.
While on travel in Chicago a couple years ago I caught a "oh, isn't this dreadful" hand-wringing pieces of journalism where they had "discovered" that even the transit card would open the door to the ATM. They trotted out stories of people who had been mugged after getting their money. So when back home I tried my BART card and it worked fine as well.
Could they improve the ATM vestibule access? Sure. But would it do any good? I doubt it. Almost everyone has some sort of card that could reasonably be used in an ATM and a mugger can just get you when you walk out or force you in when you get out your card. Or they could use a stolen card.
Given the default security-settings and install options present on so much software, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised but I am still surprised that a system whose sole purpose is security would make it so easy to allow this sort of misconfiguration. That seems like an option you should be forced to request.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Surprised guy who sits by back door: How'd you get in?
Me: Popsicle stick (holding up popsicle stick)
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
"It's a good thing people generally like working here"
At my company, we've gone through two names since 2000 and went from a people loving company to a "people at the top" loving company. I've noticed that even though they've tried to tighten security, less people actually care about security so even though they've tried to close holes, they lost thier company wide security net. There isn't a single employee in my building that gives a rats arse about physical security outside of thier own tools/stuff.
When I was hired, people would ask where I worked, and that sort of thing. Although it might not be intentionally a security question, it would've caught me if I didn't belong. Now, new hires wander around without anyone ever asking them anything.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
My wife has those "Coupon Cards" or "Frequent Shopper" cards for 30 different drug and grocery stores. She used to keep adding new ones to my key chain all the time. Tired of looking like I was hiding quite a package in my pocket al lthe time, I decided to try out a theory of mine. I scanned a stores keychain tag at a totally different store (self checkout, obviously can't hand it to a cashier). Well, it worked just fine. While you obviously won't get credit for the sale (big deal) as who knows what account it goes to, you do get all the "virtual coupons" associated with the card.
I now just carry one shopping card (Harris Teeter I think). It works at almost every store wherever I travel...CVS, Lowes Foods, Bi-Lo, etc. I just scan the card and it says "Welcome member".
And FYI. The ATM vestibules- big deal- they are all set to open on any magnetic reader as most banks and credit card companies use different numbers of tracks, data types, and encryption. They don't want to "lock out" members of other banks and not get to charge them a $3.00 "convienience fee" so they let basically any card in. Its not like it gives you access to the ATM if you use a fake card, you just gain access to a vestibule full of video cameras. Its only made as a "deterrant".
Spelling/Grammer police- I did this from a mobile while in a meeting, I don't feel like jumping through hoops to use a spell check. Just bear with me for now.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
Actually, the man-trap feature could be quite useful if properly implemented. If you had an external door with this enabled on a badge reader and a room separated from the inside with an internal door that had this disabled on a badge reader, this could trap the intruder (you know, a man trap). The intruder gets through the outside door and can't get through the inside one. If you have a badge reader that's needed to exit (w/o the man-trap feature enabled), then the intruder is now stuck in the room with no way in or out. This is a variation of the classic man-trap and allowing effectivly everyone from the outside is part of the configuration.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
or they could have just used the student info on the mag stripe as the identifier to the account. at the resturant i used to work at, we had added access control for the registers through the swipe reader we had for the credit cards. the company sent us 5 cards, but the owner was too lazy and cheap to buy more, so we used our own mag stripe cards for access (i used my grocery store card, one of my coworkers used his credit card...). it didn't write new data to the card, it just memorized what was already there. lots of fun for discovering whats on your bank cards... also there are credit card standards. the big 3 credit card brands (Visa/MC, Novus, AmEx) all use checksums on the number so that the POS can check to see if the card could exist before it dials in (because some people still use dialup for credit cards).
...For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
Everyplace I've worked seems to have those nice big glass double doors on the inside lobby entrance with the card reader on the side to unlock the doors. One night I left without my wallet, and my card key was in the wallet. I went back to the doors and they were locked for the night. So I went into the bathroom and got a stack of paper towels. I shot about 2 or 3 of them through the door, and the motion detector saw them and unlocked the doors for me.
Next day, I told my boss. He thanked me, but the facility manager started shooting me nasty looks. End of the month, my boss gave me a bonus for the info...