The Art of Deception_ Controlling the Human Element of Security - Kevin D. Mitnick [76]
“Hi, Leroy,” one of them said, reading the name off his badge. “I’m Tom Stilton, from the Marketing office at corporate in Phoenix. I’m in town for meetings and wanted to show my friend here how the world’s greatest helicopters get built.”
“Yes, sir. Your badge, please,” Leroy said. He couldn’t help noticing how young they seemed. The Marketing guy looked barely out of high school, the other one had hair down to his shoulders and looked about fifteen.
The one with the haircut reached into his pocket for his badge, then started patting all his pockets. Leroy was suddenly beginning to have a bad feeling about this. “Damn,” the guy said. “Must’ve left it in the car. I can get it—just take me ten minutes to go out to the parking lot and back.”
Leroy had his pad out by this time. “What’d you say your name was, sir?” he asked, and carefully wrote down the response. Then he asked them to go with him to the Security Office. On the elevator to the third floor, Tom chatted about having been with the company for only six months and hoped he wasn’t going to get in any trouble for this.
In the Security monitoring room, the two others on the night shift with Leroy joined him in questioning the pair. Stilton gave his telephone number, and said his boss was Judy Underwood and gave her telephone number, and the information all checked out on the computer. Leroy took the other two security people aside and they talked about what to do. Nobody wanted to get this wrong; all three agreed they better call the guy’s boss even though it would mean waking her in the middle of the night.
Leroy called Mrs. Underwood himself, explained who he was and did she have a Mr. Tom Stilton working for her? She sounded like she was still half-asleep. “Yes,” she said.
“Well, we found him down on the production line at 2:30 in the morning with no ID badge.”
Mrs. Underwood said, “Let me talk to him.”
Stilton got on the phone and said, “Judy, I’m really sorry about these guys waking you up in the middle of the night. I hope you’re not going to hold this against me.”
He listened and then said, “It was just that I had to be here in the morning anyway, for that meeting on the new press release. Anyway, did you get the email about the Thompson deal? We need to meet with Jim on Monday morning so we don’t lose this. And I’m still having lunch with you on Tuesday, right?”
He listened a bit more and said good-bye and hung up.
That caught Leroy by surprise; he had thought he’d get the phone back so the lady could tell him everything was okay. He wondered if maybe he should call her again and ask, but thought better of it. He had already bothered her once in the middle of the night; if he called a second time, maybe she might get annoyed and complain to his boss. “Why make waves?” he thought.
“Okay if I show my friend the rest of the production line?” Stilton asked Leroy. “You want to come along, keep an eye on us?”
“Go on,” Leroy said. “Look around. Just don’t forget your badge next time. And let Security know if you need to be on the plant floor after hours—its the rule.”
“I’ll remember that, Leroy,” Stilton said. And they left.
Hardly ten minutes had gone by before the phone rang in the Security Office. Mrs. Underwood was on the line. “Who was that guy?!” she wanted to know. She said she kept trying to ask questions but he just kept on talking about having lunch with her and she doesn’t know who the hell he is.
The security guys called the lobby and the guard at the gate to the parking lot. Both reported the two young men had left some minutes before.
Telling the story later, Leroy always finished by saying, “Lordy, did my boss chew me up one side and down the other. I’m lucky I still have a job.”
Joe Harper’s Story
Just to see what he could get away with, seventeen-year-old Joe Harper had been sneaking into buildings for more than a year, sometimes in the daytime, sometimes at night. The son of a musician