2 HN users recommended this talk3 months2017–2023score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN recommends it as an interesting talk on how weak real-world door security is, and cites it for the stories of bad doors.
Deviant Ollam shows that most physical attacks on doors bypass the lock, with photo and video examples of how doors, frames and hardware get defeated. It is a physical security talk from Shakacon.
“Heard it recently and thought it was really interesting.” (HN, 2018)
I realise the thread is phone phreaking related and that was kind of the point of your post; but in the spirit of the talk below to think more outside the box... There's a pretty good chance in many cases you can just open the external box with some easy to get (and relatively standard) key. And hit a button. Related: [link] This is a good related talk - goes outside the box on all the ways you can often get into commercial buildings without picking (or even in many cases, interacting with) the lock "The Search for the Perfect Door" by Deviant Ollam [this video] Also good: [link] [Howard Payne & Deviant Ollam - This Key is Your Key, This Key is My Key] [link] [DEF CON 22 - Deviant Ollam & Howard Payne - Elevator Hacking - From the Pit to the Penthouse]
Deviant Ollam - The Hotel Room Gourmet [link] Also not 2018 but his elevator with Howard Payne talk: [link] (1h version) [link] (2h version) And the search for the perfect door: [this video]
Assuming this was done at the government's request, I assume Hetzner is more than willing to comply with a court order mandating they allow them to monitor and physically size a machine. And outside of nation-state requests, even ignoring the fact that someone could probably pay-off an employee, I think ease would depend a lot on the datacenter and target; judging by the awesome and hilarious story behind the Fremont Cabal accidentally becoming an internet exchange by essentially having some dude barely secretly slipping unauthorized cables into the raceways [1], I figure there are a lot of places where if your target is simply renting a couple rack units or single rack rather than an entire locked cage, you can probably get physical access by doing the same. Also, a lot of Deviant Ollam's stories about industrial security and the dozens of ways he's broken into utility companies, server rooms, etc — mostly just by being confident, looking the part, bad doors [2], and badge cloning [3] — don't give me a ton of confidence that someone with skill couldn't feasibly either get direct access to servers they shouldn't, or at the very least, access to an important part of the supply chain for their target. And speaking of supply chain, my processor died recently, so I ordered a brand-new in box replacement Ryzen, and when it arrived last night, out of curiosity, I wanted to see if I could get the CPU out of the box without breaking the tamper-evident authenticity seal... ... and abo
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