Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Movie plot comes true

Funny, especially in light of watching the season premiere of "24" where Jack shoots out a video camera, which draws the people out to check on it, leaving them vulnerable to attack.  Add social engineering to that and you have a nice attack. 

The danger of false alarms...

Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 00:57:29 +0100
From: David Hollman
Subject: Sometimes the computer is right...

Here's a case where social engineering defeated an apparently correctly
working automated security system and allowed a burglary:

"An experienced jewelry thief may have hoodwinked the University of British
Columbia's campus security by telling them to ignore security alarms on the
night of last month's multi-million dollar heist at the Museum of
Anthropology...

Four hours before the break-in on May 23, two or three key surveillance
cameras at the Museum of Anthropology mysteriously went off-line.

Around the same time, a caller claiming to be from the alarm company phoned
campus security, telling them there was a problem with the system and to
ignore any alarms that might go off.

Campus security fell for the ruse and ignored an automated computer alert
sent to them, police sources told CBC News."

Full article:
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2008/06/04/bc-ubc-security-ruse.html


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