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Comment by ARandomerDude | Hacker News Reader

When I worked for the government, my coworkers and I half joked that if you dressed nicely, wore a lanyard, and carried around a clipboard and a stopwatch, you could probably get into a lot of facilities you didn’t have access to.

None of us were brave enough to try it.

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I used to work for a company that supported a lot of exhibitors at trade shows and conferences and things.

In theory, basically all of these required an exhibitor pass to get in to. Sometimes I’d have one, sometimes it would be with someone already at the show who I was supposed to call to come out and let me in, etc.

I used to make a game out of getting in without using or having a pass.

One of the easiest strategies was just to have a slightly large or unwieldy looking box and find a well enough travelled side door. In the context of a trade show or something, somebody hauling stuff in through a side door was 100% expected. Nobody would blink an eye at holding the door for you. Often there’d be a security person inside but if you just walked confidently and like you knew where you were going they wouldn’t chase you down just to ask you to put down all your stuff and dig your pass out.

Same strategy has worked to drive right past vehicle barriers. They’ll tell you can’t drive in there. Tell them you’re there for <namedsponsor> and you’re not carrying all these boxes in the back seat from a mile away. Quick radio call and “drive slow through the crowd please, be really careful”. Wasn’t even there to deliver anything, that area just has shit all for parking.

After showing up in a group of ten people carrying <namedsponsor> swag and gear, wearing <namedsponsor> clothing, in a <namedsponsor> wrapped vehicle and having every staff member have to present a pass and submit to a glance through of everything they were bringing in… one of my main contacts was always shocked every time I’d do this.

Make way more money now doing way more interesting work, but that role definitely had some fun parts.

Have you caught these couple of Max Fosh videos?

I Broke Into The International Security Convention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM3imMiERdU

I Broke Into The U.S. Security Convention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmgLwxK8TvA

Sounds so fun. It would probably be a pay cut for me as well at this point, but it's still kind of my dream job.

I used to break into music festivals as a kid.

The best time was just as camera phones were being adopted. I had a paying friend already on site, and got him to send me a picture of the wristband. Sky blue, yellow toggle.

I head to a haberdashers, grab some ribbon and a few appropriately sized beads and laugh my way in through the front gate.

No way that'd work these days, but my favourite hack to date.

Good times.

Oh, I have some coworkers that are often tasked on going into places they shouldn't be and seeing if anybody complains.

At least over the population we test, your chances of getting in jail are big enough that you shouldn't try it. But you certainly can collect anecdotal evidence that it works.

Or a ladder. Nobody stops a pair of people dressed like laborers carrying a ladder.

Or just a high-vis vest, a hardhat, and a toolbox or belt.

Security minded types might still stop you, especially since these are the kind of well-known scenarios that might get used in security training.

You want invisible? Be female, 40+, short but otherwise average build, any skin colour but white, black hair, generic cleaning staff outfit, and one of those carts with mops and buckets. Now you're invisible (racist, classist, and misogynistic biases exist, might as well use them).

(As a 2m tall person I can't blend in anywhere.)

Or just be very pregnant while carrying boxes, anybody will open the door for you. Pro-tip: prothesis pregnant belly full of tools.

If you smoke a few Marlboros in a cleaning staff outfit, get some Walmart shoes, get a $30 phone, and get a mop and bucket, I feel like it might work pretty well.

I don't think it's racist, classist, or misogynistic to make an observation. You yourself made this observation, and I didn't detect the slightest hint of racism or misogyny from your report even though it described a very specific marginalized group. On the contrary, to your point, the reason they are "invisible" is because we are used to seeing exactly what you describe.

When I sold my Flipper Zero recently, the buyer showed up wearing business casual, with a button-down shirt tastefully embroidered with the name of a company involved in commercial real estate.

I didn't ask whether they actually worked for that company, or the outfit was part of their pen-testing toolkit.

A few years back a town lost several miles of copper cable installed under main street. A work truck pulled up in the middle of the street, coned off the area, opened a lid, hooked up a spooler and started yanking.

They spooled up a truckload of copper, gathered their cones, and drove off. They were seen by hundreds of witnesses in the middle of the day, but nobody suspected anything.

This is pretty common, even was a reddit sub dedicated to it. /rActLikeYouBelong

Its amazing where you can get with some "proper dress" and confidence. Lots of cases of using a hivis vest and lanyard to get into free concerts, gaining rooftop access, etc.

There’s a line in the 90s movie the Paper where Michael Keaton’s character says, “A clipboard and a confident wave will get you into any building.”

I have to admit that I actually used that on occasion.

9/11 changed that fact.

9/11 might have changed it in some places but not most.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BavarianFireDril...

When I worked in film production we would also joke that "you could stop a parade with a walkie-talkie". In other words just holding the walkie and telling people what to do was very effective even when you had no real authority.

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