Tiger Team is a 2007 American television show on Court TV, [1] that was aired as a burn-off pilot on the evening of December 25, 2007, [2] days before the network converted to the new branding of truTV.
The show follows a civilian tiger team [3] composed of Chris Nickerson, Luke McOmie, and Ryan Jones, members of Alternative Technology, an Information Security company from Colorado, which is hired to infiltrate organizations with the objective of testing their weaknesses to electronic, psychological, tactical, and physical threats. Attacks executed on organizations in this television show include social engineering, wired and wireless hacking, and physical breaking and entering
Tiger Team's two produced episodes aired on Christmas Night 2007 at 11:00 pm ET, a time when original new television programming usually never premieres, much less non-holiday programming. Although some viewers were interested in more episodes of the show, the network emailed those who inquired to say it was only a 'special', and there would be no consideration under truTV's new programming direction to make it a continuing series. [4]
The first episode was described as an "excellent example " of the issue posed by persons "posing as a vendor [to] compromise [a] target company". [6]
Customers rely on vendors to identify, prevent, and remediate problems. However, if corporate processes are not in place and used to prevent unauthorized personnel from accessing sensitive systems, anyone posing as a vendor could compromise the target company. An excellent example of exploiting such an attack was viewed by audiences of Court TV during the pilot episode titled 'Tiger Team.' During the filming of the television show, Luke McOmie was able to access a car dealership's computer system posing as a vendor which provided network tech support. McOmie was able to retrieve and delete sensitive information during the penetration test, as well as obtain passcodes to the company's alarm system. He was able to do so because the victim accepted his identity at face value, rather than vet his claim to be working for the car company's vendor.