John Strand is a penetration tester. He’s paid to break into computer networks and buildings to test their security. In this episode we listen to stories he has from doing this type of work.
Thanks to John Strand for coming on the show and telling your story.
Sponsors
Support for this episode comes from LastPass. LastPass is a great password manager but it can do so much more. It can setup 2FA for your company, or use it to monitor what your users are doing in the network. Visit LastPass.com/Darknet to start your 14 day free trial.
Support for this episode comes from Blinkist. They offer thousands of condensed non-fiction books, so you can get through books in about 15 minutes. Check out Blinkist.com/DARKNET to start your 7 day free trial and get 25% off when you sign up.
Sources
- How a Hacker’s Mom Broke Into a Prison—and the Warden’s Computer
- Video: How not to suck at pen testing John Strand
- Video: I Had My Mom Break Into Prison
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
Episode artwork by odibagas.
Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Equipment
Recording equipment used this episode was the Shure SM7B, a cloudlifter, Motu M2, Sony MDR7506 headphones, and Hindenburg audio editor.
Transcript
[FULL TRANSCRIPT]
JACK: [MUSIC] You ever drive by a prison or juvenile correction facility and see the prisoners outside in the yard? Am I the only one who immediately starts looking at ways they can escape? Seriously, I’ve parked and stared at prison fences multiple times when I was young, looking at how high the fence goes, examining the razor wire on top, watching the gate. These gates are typically doubled up; you can go in the first gate and then they close it behind you, and then the second gate opens. They never open both gates at once. I like to look up at the guard towers to see if anyone is up there. I’m sure they’re looking back down at me. The windows of a prison are typically too small for a human to squeeze through. They like to be really narrow within a brick wall. The fences are usually doubled up; if you can get over one, there’s just another one that you need to climb over which gives the guards enough time to notice you climbing over one and stop you from getting over the second. Getting out or in through these barriers seems impossible. But get ready because in this episode, we’re going to test the security of a prison.