[geeks] Tiger Team: new CourtTV show on penetration testing

[Chad McAuley]

Chad McAuley wrote:
> Looks like CourtTV has a new series starting soon that follows a group 
> of penetration testers as they go around doing their job. 

I watched the first two episodes of this last night.  It's a pretty good 
show, and it'll definitely be staying on the list of shows I DVR.  It 
shows all the phases of the operation, not just the actual penetration, 
so you get to see how they gather intel and do recon on their clients. 
It's already made it clear that the human element tends to be the 
weakest link; a lot of the info they gather is via social engineering 
attacks.  Being a 30 minute show, it is rather light on details since it 
follows them from when the client first calls them to when the team does 
their debriefing, but there's still enough to keep it interesting.

It has a nice covert feel to it, which was the big thing I was afraid 
they'd screw up, since it'd be impossible for something like this to 
look right if it was shot in HD and with steadicams and everything. A 
lot of the footage comes from the client's security cameras or hidden 
cameras they've got on them while they're doing recon, and the camera 
crew is just two guys with handheld cameras that follow them around.

There's a few spots between the two episodes where it feels (to me, 
anyway) like they played with the time line a tiny bit or filmed the 
guys saying things after the fact to make it seem more exciting, but 
nothing major.  If you missed it, it looks like the first two episodes 
will be airing again at 3AM and 3:30AM e/p on the 28th, so you can set 
your DVRs for that.  CourtTV also has streaming video of the first 
episode up on their website [0] (Flash required, natch.)  Failing that, 
I'm sure it's also showed up on usenet and the torrent sites by now.

[0]: 
http://www.courttv.com/onair/shows/red/red_player.html?id=870&link=REDshlk