Red team hacker on how she 'breaks into buildings and pretends to be the bad guy'

This interview with a senior penetration tester outlines common physical and social-engineering attack techniques used during red-team assessments: dumpster diving to recover Wi‑Fi credentials, impersonation and pretexting to bypass reception and gain access, planting malicious devices on corporate networks to exfiltrate data, and combined email-plus-voice phishing to harvest credentials. The piece emphasizes that human-targeted social engineering remains highly effective, that attackers often exploit ordinary workplace processes and emotions, and that even well-resourced organizations can be compromised through lapses in physical and procedural controls.