Social Engineering 4tw

So as I wrote about yesterday I took my wife on a much needed weekend get-a-way to see Madonna on Saturday night. We flew in early Saturday morning, checked in, got into our room and napped a bit before getting ready for the big show.

I planned this trip as kind of a present to my wife. She kicks ass and works super hard. I bought the best suite I could find and for the Madonna Tickets we had floor seats about 7 rows back from the stage on the left side. I paid $1300.00 for the 2 tickets on eBay over 2 months ago. So ya I have been planning this for a while.

So we go through the turnstile and we go through, they scan our tickets and a buzzer goes off. The lady looks down at them and is like “Umm these tickets are for TOMORROW night not tonight”. I looked down in horror and saw the Sunday the 9th on the bottom of the tickets. GREAT NOW WHAT. So I just looked at the lady and said what do you suggest we do. She said to goto the box office and see if they can do anything for you.

Now we were already through the turnstile and there were mobs of people coming so she said we would have to walk around past the concessions. But we were inside the arena. I told my wife lets just chill a little bit and grab a drink and think about things.

Now I dunno how many know about my background in security but I have about 5 years in the field. I was the lead Unix Server Security admin and lead a team for 3 years with Wells Fargo at there head quarters in Des Moines, IA. They sent me to tons of training but 50% of the training involved social engineering as much as IT. Psychology and how to get people to do what you want them to do was fascinating to me. 90% of it is just acting “as if”.

Ok so back to our situation. My wife and I are waiting in line getting drinks and I am studying the tickets. I notice that the tickets have a perforated side which does not contain the date but just has the seats, section, and price you paid. NICE. I ripped them off and put the larger pieces in my pocket. Now my wife and I made a B-line for those seats. Every time someone looked like they were about to stop us I turned around and pretended to talk to my wife about something while keeping forward momentum acting as if we were going where we belonged. We were only stopped 1 time and I showed the stubs to the person for the section. She was like Umm where is the rest of the ticket. I said they tore it off “she asked who tore it off?” and I totally ignored her and said “HEY LOOK THERE IS JON LETS GO SAY HI” and dashed off to where our tickets were for (even though the wrong night).

Now keep in mind its early… like 7:30PM. Madonna does not take stage until 9pm. So it was very dangerous to stay in this section where we really did not have tickets for. If someone came and had those tickets we would for sure be escorted out of the arena.

So I explained to my wife we were going to go back outside where the soiveniers and drinks were BUT we were going to make sure all the ushers on the way up noticed us so they would not question if we came back down.

I kept asking them where the closest places to get drinks were, where the bathrooms were etc. and when I would ask I would also ask them by name and tried to keep there name in my mind incase I needed to yell down to them to let me in. Afterall I belonged down there.

So long story short my wife and I had a great time just walking around talking and drinking. By this point I was not really that pissed at myself for making this massive mistake and was pretty excited to see how this was going to play out.

Madonna took the stage and I figured it was now or never. We each grabbed 2 drinks and headed down to where we were before. I had already told my wife we just need to eye a open area and go there like we belong. We had 2 drinks so it would be difficult for us to reach for a ticket =P.

We walked right down to the floor and our row we were in before was full but 4 rows up had quite a bit of room. We went in there liked we belonged and started high 5′ing the other people in the area who were dancing it up.

We stayed there all night and had a blast.

Not only were we attending a concert we did not have tickets for we were about 4-5 people back from the stage. All because we did some basic social engineering.

I put together a small compilation of videos from the concert… feel free to make fun of me.