Looks are critical to account for in engineering a physical con. Not that one necessarily needs to be gorgeous, but one needs to be fit to the scene, in a way that minimizes the chances of someone undesirably thinking twice about your actions.
Exactly, you need to be credible and non-threatening. There is an history of a Japanese pentester that was always allowed to get into the datacenter because everybody trust a Japanese engineer.
Looks are critical to account for in engineering a physical con... in a way that minimizes the chances of someone undesirably thinking twice about your actions.
I don't know. Charisma and looks are pretty much orthogonal, at least for some people. The canonical example is Hitler, somebody whom you'd think people would instinctively avoid at work or the neighborhood bar, yet who somehow ended up running Germany.
It never hurts to be hot or handsome -- would a young Donald Trump who looked and sounded like Hitler have gotten very far in life? -- but it clearly isn't an absolute requirement.
I disagree. For example, if you're made up gorgeous and this leads a security checkpoint guard to notice you, and then they're checking you out and realize that your shoes are unusually fashionable, and then they notice that your badge lanyard is the wrong color and your badge looks a bit crinkly, now your cover is blown — all because you drew their eye.
That's not to say that there is no value in attractiveness — it's just not a guaranteed upside that can be taken for granted as harmless. This also shows up in spycraft, where "unmemorable" can be a very strong asset.
