Or he is well-versed in classics - this is exactly what happens in “How to Steal a Million” with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole.

Something similar was in one of Donald Westlake's Dortmunder novels, I forget which one.

Westlake doesn't get mentioned often enough on here. I love his books.

There must be some infosec term for this, but I'd imagine it's close to "signal poisoning" - turning signal into noise.

As well as what others have said ("alarm fatigue") specifically to this case, I think it falls under the more general category of "Resource Exhaustion Attacks". Most tech types think of those primarily in the context of DDOS. But the fundamental idea behind it, where an attacker doesn't exploit any specific weakness in the system but rather seeks to exhaust some finite consumable resource necessary to the system's operation, applies to a lot of different areas of modern society. And not just security either, humans in general have finite attention and mental resources. Rather then seek to convince people of any specific thing, or hack a forum or the like, attackers may seek to simply spam so much noise, or to use asymmetrical rhetorical hacks (argument is low energy to write but high energy to refute), that a target population runs out of energy to respond.

All security involves an economic equation of finite resources for both defenders and attackers. Defenders definitely have to consider the ratios there, and particularly if they've made any implicit assumptions of a given resource as unlimited (like in this case, a guard's tolerance for tech SNAFU bullshit).

Wonderful explanation, thank you.

Alarm fatigue.

Alert Fatigue.

That sounds more correct.

Reminds me of Sentry’s “ignore this until it happens x times.”

The alarm that cried wolf

Not so much infosec, but "the boy who cried wolf" is the folklore story to go with it. It's one reason why audible car alarms are phased out - they go off so frequent and falsely (e.g. because of a cat) that they don't have the desired effect of people looking at what's going on or deterring a thief.

I learned the wrong lesson from that story as a child: Even when I was not the perpetrator, I always made sure to look guilty, and was in most cases exonerated. Eventually when I was the perpetrator, nobody would believe it was me, even if I looked guilty!

They certainly draw attention at night.

Pretty much the same thing is already called "semantic satiation" when it comes to language.

In one of the biggest heists ever (still unsolved) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum [1], alarms went off before the theft occurred.

Interesting to hear this being validated as a tactic in another art theft.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museu...

There's a fascinating Derren Brown program The Great Art Robbery where (if I remember right) he tells a gallery what he will steal and the exact time, and still manages it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb1I7Ld7Cc0

If you think this was not staged I have a bridge to sell you.

Staged in what way? I don't think so. (I've seen just about all his TV shows and read his books, including the 2 meant for magicians only, which give away as much as his other books and verbal explanations conceal)

How does he guess what card Stephen Fry mentally picks here? It seems kind of impossible, but not when you know how it's done—combining 3 different elements/techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI5-NDiY7IM

Marc Paul doing the Berglas Effect seems probably faked somehow. It seems impossible! I read a book with 200+ pages explaining how this one trick is done, The Berglas Effects. It's hugely complicated, and was even much moreso the way Berglas did it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdXIVQ-asqU

>How does he guess what card Stephen Fry mentally picks here? It seems kind of impossible, but not when you know how it's done—combining 3 different elements/techniques.

Or just fixing the cards and/or paying Fry (a professional host and actor) and/or editing the video.

Cheating with editing video/paying stooges would be one way, but far as I know he never does/did that, in any of his TV or live shows. He worked for years in restaurants, going from table to table doing magic, without assistants or any props but those in his pockets etc, and developed a lot of his tricks and skills then. He explained this trick in one of his books:

1. the deck has only (from memory) 8 different cards, enough to appear a full deck. He has 8 different card-cigarettes in his pockets for the later part of the trick.

2. You can hear him "forcing" the K of diamonds before Fry picks it.. burn the image of the card (red picture card) .. burn that into your mind..don't go for the 3 of hearts (red but not a heart). He's highly skilled in this kind of suggestion, with years of practice, guiding your choice without your noticing. This doesn't guarantee K of diamonds, but vastly increases the odds, which a lot of Brown's stuff, and other mind readers, involves—increasing the odds, by various means. Then,

3. to me the most interesting part, the framing. When he says repeat that over and over in your mind, like K of Diamonds, K of Diamonds - Fry picked that card, and it seems even more impressive than if Derren had correctly guessed his card at that point and ended the trick, more casual and witty, pretending he didn't know it when he did. It seems as if Derren knew the card, but he didn't know for certain. There was just a fair chance it was right, maybe 30-50% or more. If he was wrong, as in many other times he performed it, the trick would continue naturally, no harm done, and he's learnt it's not the K of Diamonds. The trick will always end in success, but this bonus mind reading miracle along the way has a fair chance of success, maybe much more than 50% in Derren's hands.

I've heard magicians say the best possible magic trick is to get someone to shuffle a proper deck of cards, then you announce the top card before they turn it over. 1/52 times you will be right, and they will never believe it was just chance, but forever believe you can do miracles. This is a version of that, but with much greater odds, and a very natural, invisible "out" if you are wrong.

> Or just fixing the cards and/or paying Fry (a professional host and actor) and/or editing the video.

Fry does not need that money and he really, really does not strike me as the type who would wittingly go for that kind of shenanigans.

I am however certainly not convinced that Brown does what he claims he does.

>Fry does not need that money and he really, really does not strike me as the type who would wittingly go for that kind of shenanigans.

It's showbusiness. You don't need to need the money. Tons of actors endorse BS products or do BS movies despite having 10s or 100s of millions in the bank.

And tons don't.

If someone told you they'd steal a 100k GBP item from you at 3 PM tomorrow, would you only have one person watching it?

Derren Brown is an interesting case within magic. His stage shows aren't 100% stooges and almost seem less believable than some of his TV specials. He's one of if not my favorite contemporary magicians (especially since Ricky Jay died)

Yup; over-eager virus- and malware scanners have much to answer for in that regard. And Windows' attempts at security in windows Vista I believe it was - by having an intrusive "admin approval" screen - is another example where after only a few "false alarms", people already automate hitting OK when something like that pops up without reading the details.

I guess you don't read much or watch many movies. This is a device used in almost every museum heist plot to the point that it's cliché.

We must watch different heist movies then. The device used in most that I remember is the IR lasers, lol.