GoKawiilPWNED Welcome back to PWNED, the column where we document serious security failures in hopes we can all learn from others’ mistakes. This week, we’ll talk about how a lack of physical security can allow threat actors to take control of your network.
Have a story about someone leaving a gaping hole in their network? Share it with us at [email protected]. Anonymity is available upon request.
Our story comes to us from two professional red teamers, who get paid to break into offices and networks in order to find holes in the security system. Kristopher Johnson was working as an offensive security consultant at Echelon Risk + Cyber in 2023 and his manager was Dahvid Schloss. We spoke to both.
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Johnson and another employee named Michael were called upon to challenge the security at a client’s office while Schloss supervised remotely. It was winter and the maintenance crew had the maintenance door open. They walked through it and into the mail room, where a woman confronted them and asked what they were doing there.
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The two intrepid testers talked to the company maintenance crew and told them that they were new IT employees without working badges. They said that they had almost slipped on the ice and offered to help shovel, an offer the maintenance team was happy to take them up on.
While Michael kindly helped the maintenance crew shovel snow, Johnson asked if the maintenance folks could let him in so he could go upstairs and start setting up Michael’s laptop for work. They let him in where he was free to explore the building as his partner brushed away a large section of ice and snow.
Inside the building, Johnson looked for a place to plug in his Raspberry Pi. The idea was to connect this single-board computer to the network, where they could access it remotely and use it to attack the network from afar. He tried plugging his Raspberry Pi into an Ethernet port in the AV closet, but the company had network access control enabled, which prevented it from connecting. The Raspberry Pi had an LTE radio, but it couldn’t connect from the closet either.
So Johnson instead moved his Raspberry Pi into the middle of the conference room and found an active network port that didn't have network access control enabled on it. However, he realized the Pi would be visible to anyone who entered the conference room, and they might find it suspicious. So he took some trash cans and used them to hide the device.
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