Inside the twisted mind of the security professional

[ciphergoth]

Bruce Schneier once wrote an excellent essay entitled Inside the twisted mind of the security professional.

Uncle Milton Industries has been selling ant farms to children since 1956. Some years ago, I remember opening one up with a friend. There were no actual ants included in the box. Instead, there was a card that you filled in with your address, and the company would mail you some ants. My friend expressed surprise that you could get ants sent to you in the mail.

I replied: "What's really interesting is that these people will send a tube of live ants to anyone you tell them to."

Security requires a particular mindset. Security professionals -- at least the good ones -- see the world differently. They can't walk into a store without noticing how they might shoplift. They can't use a computer without wondering about the security vulnerabilities. They can't vote without trying to figure out how to vote twice. They just can't help it.

This was my reaction on reading this story on craziestgadgets.com (propogated from booklectic):

A Norwegian hospital is outfitting all newborn babies with Anti-Theft Alarms. The alarms consist of a small chip placed on the baby’s ankle bracelet and it is paired with a matching chip on the mother’s bracelet.

If the two chips are separated by more than a certain distance, an alarm goes off. If the baby’s bracelet is removed without authorization, the whole hospital goes into lockdown mode with the elevators stopping and the doors locking. The alarms are meant to prevent both kidnappings and baby mixups.

My question is, is there a crime you could commit by locking down the hospital at a time of the criminal's choosing? Prop open a few doors (or have associates hold them open), then snip the bracelet to lock down the rest, and use the ensuing chaos to steal stuff? Or indeed, could you use it to commit a murder?

Comments

[sibelian.livejournal.com]

I don't know abut that. Presumably the system would be tracking which doors were and weren't open and if you combine that with CCTV all it would do is focus the security personnel on the location of the criminals. It would be okay if all the security personnel were trapped inside the hospital with non-functional elevators along with everyone else but that seems unlikely! Most security offices in the hospitals I've worked in are partly off-site.

You could commit a murder, though, I think, depending on how stupidly the system was designed in the first place. The article doesn't say which elevators are locked down, but it's not out of the question for an elevator journey to be necessary to transport patients to resuscitation or intensive care. You could just wait until your rich relative has a coronary and then snip the bracelet. If the system designers haven't been thinking, pop goes the uncle and cha-ching gos your fresh-minted Swiss bank account. But, again, perhaps unlikely, most patients looking like they may need intensive care are situated near the appropriate facilities. Perhaps not all, mind you.

The thing surprising me about this is that it's in Norway. Are there lots of babies going missing in Norway?

[reddragdiva]

Do they have terrible attacks of FOR THE CHILLLLLLLLLLLLLDRUNNNNNNNNNNN in Norway?