at this data center.

I'll bet they had a problem with leaks.

I'm going..

So did he.

I'm expecting a long list of toilet based jokes to follow. Don't disappoint :)

The pen tester was flush with success after throwing this one in the bowl. Security really got the toilet brush-off and had to disinfect the situation once they had recovered from turning yellow with rage at the leak that had occurred.

Did the penny drop when they saw the paper trail?

And discovered we shared a wall with a bank.

Well, we shared the first eight feet of the wall; right up to the false ceiling tiles. Above that was three feet of fresh air... they were a bit concerned when I pointed it out to them.

Urine trouble now!

Comment of the day! W00t!

That's just taking the piss!

and today I am going to break out of this piss corridor using a folded-up bit of toilet paper ...

Often, those panels are only held by screws, though, in this case possibly nothing so secure, as he had bidirectional access. Possibly, only spring clips were used to ensure easy access in the event of an urgent service problem.

One of those square section keys I expect. Not exactly secure!

Yep - it was just a square key! Very easy.

"remember it is always about more than just IP access"

IP or "I pee", sounds the same to me...

I can only imagine the strained look on the faces of the security team when this was explained to them.

I will admit though that I've heard of security going down the crapper but never past the crapper and out the otherside..

"more than just IP access"

Nice, reminds me of those fake names like I.P. Freely.

by I. P. Daly

The swan's escaped. From the castle.

And who might you be?

Mr Staker. Mr Peter Ian Staker. Yes. PI Staker.

I stumbled across an Alan Terego in an online thread the other day.

Alan, aka 'Al'...

Al Terego...

A/C.

I once worked in a 'secure' research centre where the actual work was done behind a key coded door. However, during maintenance we found out that the void beneath the false floors outside and inside was continuous and the space was about 60 cm high, the tiles could be lifted from above with a small lever (e.g. a screwdriver) and from below just by lifting them, so you could in principle crawl past the locked door from outside.

I admit, I've never had to do work in an environment with false floors, but 60cm seems like a hell of a large space to me!

I dread to think how many bodies you were hiding down there.

"I dread to think how many bodies you were hiding down there."

No room for them - too many cables. That's why the BOFH favours carpet, quicklime and a shallow grave in dense woodland.

...but 60cm seems like a hell of a large space to me!

Only 60cm? I've worked in a few DCs with deeper floor voids, so easily deep enough to crawl through comfortably. The first was for a large mainframe site, and asked the facility manager why. Answer was because it used forced air underfloor cooling*. And being a big IBM (ok, Amdahl 5990-1400E) shop, the floor void needed enough space to accomodate massive channel cables that were probably 3cm in diameter, with brick-sized connectors, plus all the thick serial cables going to channel controllers, FEPs etc.

So it allowed decent cable routing & management, without restricting airflow too much. Plus it made it easier for us to do the human ferret thing and crawl under the floor dragging cables. And despite being a secure DC with an even more secure room inside it, we could crawl into that room because the drywall only went as far as the floor tiles. That got fixed by adding sheetrock under the tiles.. Which we then improvised some cable routes with a couple of large screwdrivers. High security doors and mantrap entrances may impress manglement and clients, but won't defeat a determined attacker who can make their own entrance using a skillsaw or a large hammer.

That was a fun introduction to big IT and DC design. I also learned that a lot of DCs since shared the same problem. Plus other incipient risks, like using non-plenum rated cables between fire zones, and the challenges of creating fire stops that could be easily managed if new cables needed to be run.

*Naturally we abused the underfloor cooling and used it to keep a couple of slabs of beer cool under the floor of our comms room inside the DC.

Current working location, very large, very old building. Was on the 'third' floor with an FM team to work out where we could possibly run some cables (assuming the 'aboves' would even let us once they saw the plan; they didn't). The FM guy, popped up the floorboards in the corridor and I was expecting maybe a one- or two-foot drop to the ceiling of the floor below, and maybe some rafters and old conduit running around. Nope, it was about eight feet straight down to a solid concrete (?) layer you could walk around on. You could have lived down (up?) there.

A/C b/c location.

There was a Telco *unmanned* Data Centre which I had to visit often where the outer wall of the building was literally next to a public pavement (within 50cm or so) and the card-activated door opened outwards.

On multiple occasions as I was about to use my access card I noticed that the door was already sitting about 2-3cm ajar. It seems that sometimes when the door closed (via typical "auto close" mechanism) sometimes it "bounced" and never actually closed. So the open door would be in full view of anyone walking (in one direction) along the pavement.

There were allegedly sensors in place that should have detected any such "door open" events and triggered alarms at the off-site security monitoring station but either that was not the case or else security routinely ignored them.

But a back passage for cistern access???

As pen testers like their team colours

Blue-loo team.

A piece of piss really.

In the 90s I did some work in Moscow in the Central Telegraph building. I was on the civilian side, the other side was restricted military. The toilets were common to both but there was little danger of anyone crossing due to the stench which was only alleviated by the cigarette smoke

by attaching it to a piece of string, dropping it in the bog and intercepting it further down the sewerage system using a bit of bent wire and pulling it back up the pipework.

But that would be a flash in the pan.

I remember many, many moons ago whilst working for a company that liked to keep a tight control on 'expensive' office supplies (think boxes of floppy disks), they decided to lock everything up in a small room - with an 8 foot wall which could easily be climbed over due to someone deciding it would be also be a good idea to put filing cabinets up against said wall. Both sides.

Maybe some engineers requested they build it that way, you know, just for the sake of convenience.

Alternatively, it may perfectly demonstrate the way in which bean-couters consider proper security as a drain on finances.