Dumpster Diving for the Wrong Reasons
One day last week I had the opportunity to do some dumpster diving. Every techy, hacker, social engineer, or security analyst dreams of the day he gets paid to do some dumpster diving. However, this diving experience was less than desirable and it was for all the wrong reasons…
I have been working on a DVR project (An Affordable Surveillance System - March 24th, 2006). Basically, creating an FTP server using a Dell PowerEdge 850 and FreeBSD for some D-Link IP cameras, DCS-3220’s to be exact, to FTP an image over to the server every 2 seconds. Everything was going well. I had unboxed and provisioned 4 new cameras and was beginning to unbox the PoE injectors for the cameras. When I was done with all four camera boxes and the remaining unused PoE boxes I felt a trip to the company dumpster was in order. So, I head off to the dumpster with 8 boxes piled from my hands, hovering around waist level, to my chin, used to hold the top of the tower down.
Our company dumpster is surrounded by an 8-foot privacy fence that sits on top of the curb for the drive. That would make it at least 8-foot, 4 or 5 inches tall. Me being the ex-basketball player that I am decided that I would toss the boxes over the fence instead of wrestling with the two latches that hold the fence gate together since you can never seem to get both latches undone at the same time.
I stood at the edge of the fence and begin to toss the boxes over one by one. I only missed once! 7 out of 8 ain’t bad! I figured when the cleaning crew wen out later that night to dispose of the trash they would help a brother out and put that one in there for me. It was a nice thought but I later got to take care of it myself.
I made my way back to the IT room and began pairing up PoE injectors with cameras. I made sure every camera and PoE device had the necessary cables and hardware to do the install later that evening when the lobby closed. As I was working my way through the PoE injectors, I noticed that one was missing a small black cable that is used to provide power to the camera from the PoE device… Great… Here is where the dumpster diving comes in to play.
I started my journey back out to the dumpster and one of my employees, we’ll call him Chris, decided he would watch me jump around in the dumpster finding the box I was looking for. Once we made it to the dumpster we fought with the latches to open the gate and I dove off in the dumpster.
Once inside, I quickly found the box I was looking for and grabbed the cable from within it. As I was making my way out of the dumpster, which is more difficult than you would think, I noticed Chris was standing inside the fenced in area and the gate behind him was… you guessed it… closed!
Hmmm… Now what?! No one even knew we were in there. We couldn’t holler at anyone because there was no one around to holler at. It was after 5:00 PM and most of the employees were already gone for the day anyway. It was beginning to look like we would now be waiting for the cleaning crew to dispose of the trash around eight o’clock that night. Then I got brave and put on my cape.
As I assessed the situation, walking around the dumpster looking at the towering fence overhead, I picked up the box that had missed the dumpster earlier and thought to myself “that’s what I get.” I then attempted to climb the fence. My first attempt was a complete disaster and I couldn’t determine where to put my feet to get up and over.
I then made my way to the back of the dumpster area and attempted to scale the fence again. This time I made it to the top and onto one of the brick pillars that hold the 4 corners of the fence together. Once on the pillar I debated just how far down the drop was going to be. I had to jump out far enough to clear the landscaping (yes, we have our dumpster area landscaped) but I didn’t want to jump too high and increase the height at which my body would fall 9.8 meters per second.
I finally made the plunge, opened the gate to let Chris out, and then walked toward the building smelling like trash and a bit sweaty from my adventure. I learned two things that day: 1.) Never throw away a box unless you have lifted every piece of cardboard from it to locate any “hiding” pieces, and 2.) dumpster diving ain’t what it’s cracked up to be!
Until next time…