 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. Today we do have a very special guest, Bryce Self. Yeah, Mia, thanks for joining us. You're gonna miss out on the last photo, but Bryce, you're still on time. I'm good, I'm good. I will watch it with everybody else. We'll all be surprised together. There you go. You guys. Okay, last but not least. Okay. So you kind of have to follow the tunnel to get to your destination. Wow. So they're obviously routing. I would assume AC or heat, right? HVAC of some sort. And they're going through wood, which is part of the door, half of the door, which is obviously just not good. I love the barricade, by the way, like the zip ties and then just the... That looks like something I would do, honestly. Is the crash bar broken? I don't know what's going on there. On the middle picture on the right door in the center of it. It's like the crash bar's bent or broken or there's like a post hanging. I don't know what that is. I think they took it off. That might just be the head of the crash bar. Like they are trying to utilize this door for airflow, but in reality, this door could be used for a handful of things. Yeah, wow. And what is that on the left picture? The white display thing? I feel like that would just like slide. I don't know. I feel like that's just hanging on by a prayer. What is going on here? I can explain a little bit. So Mike submitted this photo and he's a fire marshal. He inspects doors for life safety and fire codes and stuff like that. And he found this unique situation where this is a large department store with a very large occupancy. So there's a lot of people in this building and it was open for business and he stumbled upon this. So from a life safety code, he was inspecting it. Can people get out in the case of an emergency? The big no. Apparently it had been like this for months. Like they're trying to work on the air conditioner. They're trying to get things fixed. The parts are behind and all the excuses in the world, but this is definitely not okay for life safety reasons. But I was thinking from a security vulnerability side, that's not keeping anyone out of this building by any means. Like you could literally die hard, this crawl through the little tunnel to get through wherever you're trying to go. But like also it's just plywood, right? That's keep that door secure. It was Christmas, so obviously I had to get my die hard in. Yeah, I was thinking that too. It was like come up through that. But even so, I mean, I feel like, cause you know the hoses, they're pliable and bendable. So I feel like I would personally, if I saw the picture on the right, cause that's usually my view as the external side. I mean, well, take that back. The door on the left on the right picture is propped open. So I would probably look through there, but as you can probably see, yeah, it wouldn't lead to, let's say my client was the door on the right. So it would lead to probably another store somewhere else. So wouldn't be able to get anything from that way. But yeah, I would probably just walk literally in between those hoses and then just try to squeeze underneath the, yeah, just spread them apart and then just squeeze up, you know, make sure no one's coming or doing it at nighttime or whatever. Cause they would have to run this at nighttime, right? Yeah, yeah, like what's in the world. It really slows this down, right? Like it's, yeah, this is not good. I mean, even from the fire marshals standpoint, I mean, this is horrible. But yeah, from my standpoint, this makes it very easy. And that's the thing is that I go to these organizations, you know, federal banks, heavily regulated power companies and chemical companies, whatever it is, where they have federal regulations, right? It's like, you have to do this. You have to, I mean, there's everything by the book and you'll still see stuff like this. You'll still see, you know, that's why the walkthroughs are so important and you got to ask so many questions because I can get into this door. Who's been going into this door? Well, we don't know. Why not? The camera's right there. Well, we haven't been paying the people that monitored the cameras, you know, in question after question, you find thing after thing. And then this is like, oh, okay, let's look at every door, let's go to the back and see what's going on. And you'll see this and you're like, oh my goodness. You know, obviously you're trying to do the best for your client and you can't kill them with like all these recommendations. Some are hard-headed or stubborn in the sense that they're like, well, the reason we're doing this and this, that and the other is like, okay, I understand that. But when you got the fire marshal now breathing down your neck and you got the security guy breathing down your neck, it's like, hey, we got to find a better solution for this because the cost, I think at this point isn't really outweighing the risk. Air conditioning is nice and essential in some aspects. Like you got to do what you got to do to make your customers comfortable, right? But when you're putting life safety that trumps, in my opinion, everything. I always think about the worst case scenario and if there are 500 people in this large department store and they all needed to go out the back for, I don't know, an active shooter or fire or earthquake or something. And they had to all run through this obstacle course to get outside. It would not look good. I often think about like George Costanza in Seinfeld and, you know, there's a fire and he pushes the old lady out of the way. Like, but people react that way in panic situations. And this is just a death tunnel. People coming through this tunnel is not good. You said death tunnel and I instantly thought, you know, me crawling through there and sticking my head through thought of home alone, right? When he's sticking his head through the doggy door and like Kevin McAllister's just waiting on the other side with the BB gun. Funny you talk about safety stuff because I still think of safety stuff in this regard. Like, you know, can people come and go? Obviously, please. And obviously we as attackers or, you know, physical pen testers, we will take advantage of the safety and the codes. You know, I ended up talking with a peer of mine and what he does is he will specifically get all the fire codes like for the country that he's going to or the state that he's going to what have you to see what's the correct measurement of space that needs to be in between the double doors. So like, I guess smoke can go in and out and that kind of thing. And he'll use those measurements to make his own improvised tools so that they can slip through there to be able to hit the crash bar, whatever. You know, like the Knox boxes on the outside of the doors that had the keys for the fire department, you know, the fire elevator keys, all these things that are obviously for safety that we take advantage of. So it is just this like really balancing game of making sure it's safe, you're up to code but then obviously is like trying to figure out how attackers use that stuff and then defend against that. Yeah, that's a challenge that dual hardware professionals always have is like people are always constantly balancing convenience and life safety, right? But there's also like there's a vulnerability to life safety that people can take advantage of. And so knowing the vulnerabilities from a security standpoint and being able to implement code compliant hardware that is installed properly can minimize those potential attack. It's definitely worth Smith the crap out of that. I love it. I love that. No, that's exactly it. It's like minimize the risk, right? Because you can't completely negate it and it's a balancing game. Knocking score. 10, got to be. And I'm sure if Mia was still with us, I mean, she's still here on. Yes. But that made it sound like she was passing away. She would, if you didn't have to hop onto a different call she would definitely be giving it a 10 as well. And I agree. Bryce, thank you again so much for joining us. This is probably one of my favorite episodes so far. I appreciate your insights and your knowledge looking from things from a different perspective. If people want to connect with you, if people want to reach out, if people want to network, where can they find you, Bryce? Well, thanks for having me. LinkedIn I think is probably the best way to reach out to me directly. I'm hit or miss. Sometimes I like have a month where I'm always on LinkedIn, like trying to post stuff. It's really just giving back, answering people's questions, always hit me up. Hey, how do I get into the industry? What can I do? What do you think about this tool? What have you? I'm always happy to help. So reach out to me on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Bryce self on LinkedIn. So B-R-I-C-E-S-E-L-F. I think I'm the only Bryce self on LinkedIn. And then I have a website, FortifiedSolutionsLLC.com. Where people could potentially hire you. Yeah, so I do physical and wireless consulting. So I break into buildings and then hack into people's wifi. That's my specialty. And I try to be that irreplaceable puzzle piece, if you will. So whether it's another cybersecurity firm looking to have someone do that for your team or your organization that wants me to do that to find your vulnerabilities or training building courses on that specifically, building maintenance, security people, that kind of thing that maybe don't know how attackers fully think about things. It'd be really good for them to understand that so they can get themselves in their building and obviously their staff up to speed as far as like with the latest threats. I've listened to a couple of your online webinars and trainings, you know, if you just Google Bryce self, you can find some content out there. It's really insightful stuff. Any door hardware nerd would learn a lot from Bryce. So he gets the door, door approval, follow, connect with them, help him out in any way you can. Again, Bryce, thanks for joining us on the show. And for the viewers, thank you for sticking with us for another episode of Unhinged. Our doors are always open, partially cause they're unhinged.