Breaking into stores?

[Hawkeye]

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[.VX]

A store wouldn't leave cash in the till overnight.

[Th0r]

We've had the going in via the roof idea mentioned so many times. In fact I'm thinking five or six times invarious threads.

Getting in via the use of a roof is fairly simple [Although you have to make room for the factor of roofing material in the Equation.]. It is getting out that is the difficult part.

I'm going to leave the thread open as this seems better than the other threads we've had.

[Hawkeye]

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[.VX]

It would depend whether it was a proper safe, or just a cash box. Bring a cro bar (a proper 1m long one, not one of smaller ones) just in case.

News stations tend to make up the shit that the pigs won't tell them. It might've been a cash box, or they might have just been good at cracking safes. I doubt some guys would have been able to just open up a proper safe on site before any cops could get there.

[crazy white guy]

If I were to do this plan I would just go in and replace the card scanner with one that recorded the CC#'s (easily available online) and steal it ghetto style a month later. That will give you a full memory's worth of cards in no time if you do it to a gas station or similar.

But I like the idea of having a wealth of electronics in one go. So I'd say that cutting the power to the whole block would be the best option. Any alarm set off during the blackout would be blamed on the blackout and any investigation would take half an hour or more. A bullet to a vital connection into a transformer would cut the power or even better It might short out and vaporize the oil inside. Free electronics and a light show.

[Vein]

Transformers are basically just coils and coils of wires, so...i dont think a bullet would be a reliable way to destroy one. I say...molotov.

[RoundElephant]

A cocktail would not destroy coils of metal.

[.VX]

Sure are pretty though.

[crazy white guy]

To destroy a transformer you would only need to cut a single connection. If your a good shot you should be able to do that with a pistol at 20 yards. If you manage to short out the transformer. By 'short' I mean when two connections touch when they aren't supposed to. If you do this, there will be 30,000+ volts of electricity going through a few cubic CM of oil.

That might not mean anything to you so... Imagine having a car battery attached to the red and black alligator clamps. If you touch them together you get a big spark. Imagine that times a factor of 1,000,000 and that's what you'll have. It will be hard for an amateur to make it short out like that but its possible on a fluke.

[Æhµ]

As for bypassing sensors, cardboard taped to the long hand of a clock, can be used to tick over its line of sight (it would take quarter of an hour)

What are you referring to here?

A disruption device can engage all the lines, so that no signal is sent to a monitoring station

The vast majority of modern alarms will have a cell repeater, so cutting phone lines won't do it alone. You need also to jam cell communications.

I suggest you look into this site for plans for a "wave bubble"
http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble/index.html

If you have access to the store during open hours, and can get to one of the side/rear doors, try taping a thin magnet over the reed switch, making sure it doesn't interfere with the door swing. By doing this you will trick the alarm into thinking the door is always shut. Then come back later and break the lock, torch it off, whatever, and you'll be inside. Cut the phone lines and jam cell transmission in the area. Watch for this trick: alarm companies have a "neighboring business" outgoing line, so you can't just cut your targets phone line, you have to take out the neighbors too, to ensure no signal goes out.

PIRs are a bitch, because you cant get past them to disable them. You cant cut the wires to them (or the reed switches) as that automatically sets off the alarm. If you can get access to the wires, short them, don't cut them. Radio Shack makes a little clip that shorts wires in one easy step.

Again if you can lay some ground work during the stores open hours, see what PIRs you might be dealing with in the area of your entrance. It might be only one. If it can be reached, make a dummy plastic cover similar to the style of the PIR and line it with foil on the inside, and slip it right on over the PIR. It's now blind, but to the store staff it still looks like the usual PIR. If the PIR is several feet over your head use a collapsible rod attached by a clip to your dummy PIR and have a lookout cover you while it reach it up there.

Going thru the roof is a great means to get inside (not the quietest though). A grinder with a handful of metal cutting blade is all you need to cut thru the rubber roofing/metal decking that most commercial building are constructed with. When your thru you'll likely be in the space between the roof and the drop ceiling. But here is one hurdle high value targets will use - placing PIRs in the space above drop ceilings. Any movement there is known threat.

I like to look at the alarm panels if at all possible, to see what zones are alarmed. Try to identify these zones. Zones include doors, windows, hallways or traffic corridors that cant be traversed without exposure, areas of high value merchandise, manager office, loading docks, etc.

And of course, the trick is to do all this without looking suspicious to store employees, as this is straight up "casing".

I would be interested in seeing any really solid info on high-frequency scramblers that can shut down an alarm panel from the outside. Disabling the PIRs even for a minute or two would give you an enormous advantage once you breach the exterior.

[G-Lock]

Good post ?h?. I was wondering about that back-up device - how exactly get to know what RF they use to transmit the signal?

[Hawkeye]

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[.VX]

Most laser pointers that you can buy for under $5 are only 5mW or 10mW. If they could defeat motion sensors, then someone probably would have done something about it by now. Stronger ones can cost into the thousands, but they're the ones that can set matches alight and will permanently blind anyone who has in pointed into their eye. If the weaker ones can infact defeat motion sensors for a few seconds, then the 50-200mW ones would probably permanently disable it.

[Æhµ]

about cell repeaters; the FCC regulates what frequencies can be used by certain industries, someone with insider knowledge might know the exact freq's used by any particular alarm co. The only way to know exactly is to use an RF sniffer or frequency grabber. The good ones are illegal in the US, Canada allows them to be bought/sold. In fact, if you bought one in the US its probably not going to be able to cover the really interesting ranges. AOR makes one of the best, I'll try and get a good link for an online catalog.

I'd be afraid to tackle any "high-profile" target unless I knew I had locked down all cell ranges in the immediate area. The ladyada.com wave bubble is a very worthwhile project to that end, but it's hard to say what its range is, might require more than one unit to cover a sizable structure.

[Hawkeye]

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[G-Lock]

Good info guys, keep it coming. I've wondered about space blankets (or some type of thin insulation material used in house building to insulate heat/cold. They are pretty advanced BTW.) earlier, just don't have a PIR to try it out. Now imagine some type of construction of such a material, which allows you to move in the area undetected and (possibly) cover PIRs with something.

[Æhµ]

Here's something about radio antennas connecting an alarm panel to a monitoring station:

Although long-range radio systems have a self-test mechanism to help ensure that no one has deliberately or accidentally tampered with them, one alarm dealer wanted to give its radio systems a higher level of security.

"For high-end systems, the radio is polled every six minutes, but some might be every six hours," explains George Scivolette, operations manager for Security Systems by Hammond, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

That level of security may be acceptable when a radio antenna is installed in a difficult-to-reach location. But sometimes Scivolette's installers find they have to install an antenna above a dropped ceiling in order to help ensure satisfactory signal strength.

When that occurs, the company's procedure is to install a motion detector above the dropped ceiling. The motion detector is aimed at the antenna and put on a separate zone that is always armed. Long-range (100-foot) motion detectors with a pet alley work best for this application, Scivolette notes, adding that he uses devices from Optex and Rokonet for this purpose.

If the motion detector trips at night, the police are dispatched. If the motion detector trips during the day, it usually means that a heating and cooling technician or other worker is moving above the dropped ceiling.

A signal is sent immediately to the central station, and the company's personnel telephone the customer, who confirms that someone is working there.

"We ask them to let us know when the work is done, and then we poll the radio system from the central station to make sure it can transmit," Scivolette relates. Although an instance has not yet occurred in which the antenna had been disturbed, Scivolette likes the peace of mind that the added level of security brings.

The above-ceiling motion detector is not an optional add-on, Scivolette notes. "If we're selling long-range radio and we have to put the antenna above the dropped ceiling, we add the motion detector automatically," he insists.

that was from this site: http://www.sdmmag.com/CDA/Archives/d7c28f9561c38010VgnVCM100000f932a8c0____

You would have to scan with an RF sniffer to determine what radio frequency was being used by an alarm system. The article above is proof that security companies protect their systems with additional PIRs even above a drop ceiling. Obviously their goal is to prevent any one from tampering with the antenna, even ones mounted above the ceiling. Your scanner would have to be a good one to cover the broadest possible spectrum, you gotta figure alarm systems rely on obscure ranges to avoid detection.

The downside with this system describefd above is the polling:
"For high-end systems, the radio is polled every six minutes, but some might be every six hours,"
- if the system cant transmit a signal back to the monitoring station then its considered to be tampered with and cops are alerted.

For these high-end systems, this raises a few questions which need to be answered before trying to defeat the system:
1. Can RF sniffers detect a signal if the system is not actively transmitting (can the system be deliberately tripped to ensure a signal is sent out for RF sampling?)
2. Can a frequency counter/RF sniffer be used to determine when the antenna is being "polled"? Can this lead to the development of a schedule or time table providing a window of opportunity for B&E?
3. Can a "wave-bubble" or similar conceived device successfully jam this type of system from transmitting to a monitoring station?
4. Can high-frequency signal generators be attached to the line to disrupt the alarm panel?
5. Cutting phone lines. If a land line is disabled, does the monitoring station contact the phone company to determine the extent of the outage? If the outage is specific to the target does this raise suspicion? Does this cause the radio monitoring to switch to "active mode", meaning the radio antenna needs to be available for constant transmission?

It would seem to take down a high value target you would need to plan a very specialized attack. Insider info on the alarm system would almost seem crucial.

[crazy white guy]

Good info guys, keep it coming. I've wondered about space blankets (or some type of thin insulation material used in house building to insulate heat/cold. They are pretty advanced BTW.) earlier, just don't have a PIR to try it out. Now imagine some type of construction of such a material, which allows you to move in the area undetected and (possibly) cover PIRs with something.

That would be very big and cumbersome the be using during a break in. I could imagine that a similar thing could be done to make a veil or wall of it that could be rolled up and discarded once your in. Either way, PIR's are rarely a standalone system. There would be other measures that would need to be avoided.

[DoctaD]

I rarely stumble into this forum so this is the first time Ive seen this thread.

First thing you are going to need is inside info. You will probably find the magagement and security of most large retailers get shitty pay and therefore don't feel attatched as such to their position. A very small cut could provide you with a hell of a lot of info.

Breaking into stores is all fine and well, but could be missing one of the most obvious times. When large amounts of cash are leaving the store. A holdup sounds messy when you're under the assumption that you're going to get in and out without hassle, but unless you're robbing a sweet shop there are going to be troubles on the way out.

Tills in shops generally have the minimum amount left in them, especially out of trading hours. This is moreso a lack of faith in staff than a fear of being robbed.

Obviously Friday and Saturday are going to be your busiest days. Find out about the store and if you're lucky, the weekends take is lifted on a Monday morning leaving a sleepy Sunday store with little staff and a huge payload.

Some stores use a tube system from each till to the room with their safe. If this goes through the roof, it seems like an obvious target as breaking through the roof will be a lot easier if you're reaching embedded pipes rather than gaining complete access.

Sometimes huge stores have a hard time with security. The turnover of staff make it impossible for security officers to keep tabs on all faces actually working for the company. Something which seems as innocent as a staff member helping a customer out to her car could be ?1000 of electrical equipment gone within minutes with the minimal effort, and a staff uniform.

[G-Lock]

cwg>So that's what we were talkin' about. There's a great new thread on ttse, guy actually tested that and seems it works great. As for other measures..well it depends what store. I have a habit of checking PIR's and other visible security stuff in stores and I can reasonably say that most of them have shitty/cheap sensors installed. I've seen double (with microwave) sensors maybe twice.. Of course - you should overcome perimeter security, that's who different thing. But being able to move undetected by pir in the area is a huge advantage.

DoctaD>Well tills can be a target in some place like bar/night club, etc.. In store shopping ppl generaly use plastic these days. Electronics is the way to go. Few laptops and you are all set for a few months, I don't even mention other expensive electronic stuff.. And BTW - I don't know where you live, but in my place there are a bunch of small shops selling that stuff, and they aren't nothing of super security sort.

[Th0r]

Hats off to DoctaD and ?h? for the information provided!

[Æhµ]

thanks, its nice to find a forum you can ask these sort of questions without getting banned (like on lockpicking101).

In my experience bars are one of the best targets for late night B&E - they tend to have full tills and bar owners try to avoid moving cash around at that hour, find a place thats off the radar, laid back and seldom (if ever) has any trouble, and you'll find an owner that doesn't think he or she is going to be robbed. Night clubs with a rep for being a punch palace or meat market usually keep security around and a shotgun under the bar. Of course, that shotgun could be one more item to steal if you play your cards right. Bars are very vulnerable to a little game called "blinding the PIRs while everyone is drinking and then slipping into the ceiling before last call". Wait it out for everyone to leave, then slip down, empty the till(s), help yourself to the scotch, and let yourself out whichever door you can find a key for. You can always smash your way out, then throw the glass back inside so it looks like you were smashing your way in, then be gone before the police ever get the call, but its better not to let them in on how you gained entry in the first place. Theres a lot of variations to that game but theres a lot of ways to get inside a store or business without beating your head against a tough-ass lock.