Tech workers - what did your IT Security team do that made your life hell and had no practical benefit?

One chestnut from my history in lottery game development:

While our security staff was incredibly tight and did a generally good job, oftentimes levels of paranoia were off the charts.

Once they went around hot gluing shut all of the “unnecessary” USB ports in our PCs under the premise of mitigating data theft via thumb drive, while ignoring that we were all Internet-connected and VPNs are a thing, also that every machine had a RW optical drive.

mesamunefire,

We cant run scripts on our work laptop because of domain policy. Thing is, I am a software developer. They also do not allow docker without some heavy approval process, nor VMs. So im just sitting here remoting into a machine for development…which is fine but the machine is super slow. Also their VPN keeps going down, so all the software developers have to reconnect periodically all at the same time.

At my prior jobs, it was all open so it was very easy to install the tools we needed or get approval fairly quickly. Its more frustrating than anything. At least they give us software development work marked months out.

pahlimur,

Thought my work was bad. We at least can use VMs. I literally can’t do my job without one, Rockwell being what it is. Companies don’t like upgrading PLC software so I need to use old versions of windows occasionally to run old Rockwell stuff.

There was also a bug for a bit that would brick win11 PCs when trying to update PLC firmware, fun stuff.

afraid_of_zombies,

Same boat. I use dedicated laptops. This is for my old Rockwell stuff, this is for my old Siemens stuff, this is my normal laptop with AD stuff, this one for Idec, and the last one for Schneider. Pretty much every laptop at the company gets retired it becomes mine.

Also works for on site access. Customer needs support? Mail them a laptop. I got one laptop that has been in Canada, both coastlines in America, Australia, and Vietnam.

Krudler,

I cannot remember the specifics because it’s going back almost 15 years now but at one point…crontab (edit and other various vital tools) was disabled by policy.

To get necessary processes/cleanup done at night, I used a scheduled task on a Windows PC to run a BAT that opened a macro program which opened a remote shell and “typed” the commands.

Fuuuuuuck.

afraid_of_zombies,

I hate this stuff. When I had a more devops role I would just VM everything. Developers need their tools, here is a VM with root. Do what you want and backups run on Friday.

SpookySnek,

My dev pc isn’t allowed to be connected to the internet :D

mesamunefire,

Yep you have it the worst. Shut down the thread.

SpookySnek,

Wait, I haven’t even started talking about the fact it’s a huge unstructured legacy project using SharePoint 2016 and…

Where did everyone go?

afraid_of_zombies,

I had a software developer job where they expected me to write code in Microsoft notepad, put it on a USB, and then plug it into airgapped computers to test it. Wasn’t allowed to even use notepad++.

Oh it felt so freaken good leaving that job after 6 weeks. It felt even better when I used my old manager’s personal phone number on a fake grinder profile I made. She kept a tally of my bathroom breaks.

PutangInaMo,

Jump systems are a good practice but they gotta have the resources you need… I hate to say it but it sounds like y’all need to just move to a cloud platform…

Rin,

Mozilla products banned by IT because they had a vulnerability in a pervious version.

RantIt was so bullshit. I had Mozilla Firefox 115.1 installed, and Mozilla put out an advisory, like they do all the fucking time. Fujitsu made it out to be some huge huge unfixed bug the very next day in an email after the advisory was posted and the email chain basically said “yk, we should just remove all Firefox. It’s vulnerable so it must be removed.” I wouldn’t be mad if they decided that they didn’t want to have it be a managed app or that there was something (actually) wrong with it or literally anything else than the fact that they didn’t bother actually reading either fucking advisory and decided to nuke something I use daily.

Dicska,

Nah mate, they were completely right. What if you install an older version, and keep using it maliciously? Oh wait, now that you mention, I’m totally sure Edge had a similar problem at one point in the past. So refrain from using Edge, too. Or Explorer. And while we’re at it, it’s best to stay away from Chrome, as well. That had a similar vulnerability before, I’m sure. So let’s dish that, along with Opera, Safari, Maxthon and Netscape Navigator. Just use Lynx, it’s super lightweight!

EDIT: on another thought, you should just have stopped working for the above reason. Nothing is safe anymore.

Krudler,

Can’t use Lynx either.

www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2010-2810/

All web pages must now be phoned in via a touch-tone system, and delivered on paper printouts via regular post.

PoolloverNathan,

Touch-tones had some sort of vulnerability too; you’re going to have to mail in your HTTP requests.

willis936,

I am not allowed to change my wallpaper.

waterbogan,

Even worse here - we cant change the screensaver or screen lockout timeout settings!

I have a workaround by running a little looping script that keep the screen active. Its not that I particularly object to the screensaver, but once it activates I have to Ctrl Alt Delete 3-4 times and enter my password to get my desktop open again. Also it is an active screensaver that sometimes mucks up my desktop layout (I have a multiple monitor setup)

sizzling,

That is so annoying… when I’m working from home I just start a meeting with myself in Teams to keep the pc from autolocking.

lightnegative,

That’s actually genius. Here’s me writing a script to just move the mouse randomly lol, starting a Teams meeting would’ve been way simpler

feddylemmy,

This came from your security team? I usually see it from HR / management selling it as a branding issue or “professional” thing.

DaneGerous,

Disabled “unnecessary” services on all member servers including netlogon. That was a fun couple of weeks.

Krudler,

The “we’ll just disable everything until somebody complains” strategy. Idiots!

teichflamme,

Often times it’s the only strategy because most admins or system owners have no clue what services they actually need

_dev_null,
@_dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyz avatar

machine had a RW optical drive

Ah, the Private Manning protocol.

Krudler,

Less the Lady Gaga obfuscation.

We had 40,000 blank discs laying around at all times… because they were a regular part of sending art/data proofs to customers.

o_O

jj4211,

We have a largeish number of systems that IT declared catheorically could not connect directly to the Internet for any reason.

So guess what systems weren’t getting updates. Also guess what systems got overwhelmed by ransomware that hit what would have been a patched vulnerability, that came through someone’s laptop that was allowed to connect to the Internet.

My department was fine, because we broke the rules to get updates.

So did network team admit the flaw in their strategy? No, they declared a USB key must have been the culprit and they literally went into every room and confiscated all USB keys and threw them away, with quarterly audits to make sure no USB keys appear. The systems are still not being updated and laptops with Internet connection are still indirectly bridging them.

jj4211,

Also, I keep a “rogue” laptop to self administrate along with my official it laptop to show I am in compliance. Updates are disabled and are only allowed to be fine y by IT. I just checked and they haven’t pushed any updates for about 8 months.

irotsoma,
@irotsoma@lemmy.world avatar

Wait, why don’t they use patch management software? If they allow computers with Internet access to connect to them, why not a patch management server?

jj4211,

They do. In fact they mandate IT assets to have three competing patch management software on them. They mandate disabling any auto updates because they have to vet them first. My official laptop hasn’t been pushed an update in 8 months.

PutangInaMo,

Do y’all need a consultant? That is so bad it’s a non starter.

jj4211,

Ironically, we actually have a Segment of our business that provides IT for other companies, and they do a decent job, but they aren’t allowed to manage our own IT. Best guess is that they are too expensive to waste on our own IT needs. If an IT staffember accidentally shows competence, they are probably moved to the billable group.

PutangInaMo,

The irony…

jeena,
@jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

There was a server I inherited from colleagues who resigned, mostly static HTML serving. I would occasionally do a apt update && apt ugrade to keep nginx and so updated and installed certbot because IT told me that this static HTML site should be served via HTTPS, fair enough.

Then I went on parental leave and someone blocked all outgoing internet access from the server. Now certbot can’t renew the certificate and I can’t run apt. Then I got a ticket to update nginx and they told me to use SSH to copy the files needed.

Hobo,

They are sort of right but have implemented it terribly. Serving out a static webpage is pretty low on the “things that are exploitable” but it’s still an entry point into the network (unless this is all internal then this gets a bit silly). What you need to do is get IT to set up a proxy and run apt/certbot through that proxy. It defends against some basic reverse shell techniques and gives you better control over the webhosts traffic. Even better would be to put a WAP and a basic load balancer in front of the webhost, AND proxy external communications.

Blocking updates/security services is dogshit though and usually is done by people that are a bit slow on the uptake. Basically they have completely missed the point of blocking external comms and created a way more massive risk in the process… They either need to politely corrected or shamed mercilessly if that doesn’t work.

Good luck though! I’m just glad I’m not the one that has to deal with it.

AstralWeekends,

Made me write SQL updates that had to be run by someone in a different state with pretty much no knowledge of SQL.

punkwalrus,
@punkwalrus@lemmy.world avatar

Worked a job where I had to be a Linux admin for a variety of VMs. To access them, I needed an VPN that only worked inside the company LAN, and blocked internet access. it was a 30 day trial license on day 700somthing, so it had a max 5 simultaneous connection limit. Access was from my heavily locked down laptop. Windows 7 with 5 minutes locking Screensaver. The ssh software was an unknown brand, “ssh.exe” which only allowed one connection at a time in a 80 x 24 console window with no ability to copy and paste. This went to a bastion host, an HPUx box on an old csh shell with no write access to your home directory due to a 1.4mb disk quota per user. Only one login per user, ten login max, and the bastion host was the only way to connect to the Linux VMs. Default 5 minute logout for inactivity. No ssh keys allowed. No scripting allowed, was like typing over 9600 baud.

I quit that job. When asked why, I told them I was a Linux administrator and the job was not allowing me to administrate. I was told “a poor carpenter always blames his tools.” Yeah, fuck you.

AceFuzzLord,

That sounds like the equivalent of asking a carpenter to build a wooden boat large enough to carry 30 people, but only giving them Fisherprice tools and foam blocks.

AceFuzzLord,

That sounds like the equivalent of asking a carpenter to build a wooden boat large enough to carry 30 people, but only giving them Fisherprice tools and foam blocks.

FitzNuggly,

A carpenter isn’t expected to use his tools with garbage grabbers (reachy claw things) either.

AceFuzzLord,

That sounds like the equivalent of asking a carpenter to build a wooden boat large enough to carry 30 people, but only giving them Fisherprice tools and foam blocks.

TechyDad,
@TechyDad@lemmy.world avatar

ZScaler. It’s supposedly a security tool meant to keep me from going to bad websites. The problem is that I’m a developer and the “bad website” definition is overly broad.

For example, they’ve been threatening to block PHP.Net for being malicious in some way. (They refuse to say how.) Now, I know a lot of people like to joke about PHP, but if you need to develop with it, PHP.Net is a great resource to see what function does what. They’re planning on blocking the reference part as well as the software downloads.

I’ve also been learning Spring Boot for development as it’s our standard tool. Except, I can’t build a new application. Why not? Doing so requires VSCode downloading some resources and - you guessed it - ZScaler blocks this!

They’ve “increased security” so much that I can’t do my job unless ZScaler is temporarily disabled.

killeronthecorner,
@killeronthecorner@lemmy.world avatar

It’s been ages since I had to deal with the daily random road blocks of ZScaler, but I do think of it from time to time.

Then I play Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson.

lightnegative,

It has the same problem as any kind of TLS interception/ traffic monitoring tool.

It just breaks everything and causes a lot of lost time and productivity firstly trying to configure everything to trust a new cert (plenty of apps refuse to use the system cert store) and secondly opening tickets with IT just to go to any useful site on the internet.

Thankfully, at least in my case, it’s trivial to disable so it’s the first thing I do when my computer restarts.

Security doesn’t seem to do any checks about what processes are actually running, so they think they’ve done a good job and I can continue to do my job

Yawnder,

Did they block “social sites” such as stackoverflow for you too?
Yup… they did that…

tslnox,

Yeah. Zscaler was once blocking me from accessing the Cherwell ticket system, which made me unable to write a ticket that Zscaler blocked me access to Cherwell.

Took me a while to get an IT guy to fix it without a ticket.

PainInTheAES,

Now that’s a Catch-22

Dkiscoo,

Oh man our security team is trialing zscaler and netskope right now. I’ve been sitting in the meetings and it seems like it’s just cloud based global protect. GP was really solid so this worries me

agressivelyPassive,

Also, zScaler breaks SSL. Every single piece of network traffic is open for them to read. Anyone who introduces zscaler should be fired and/or shot on sight. It’s garbage at best and extremely dangerous at worst.

G00d4y0u,

Zscaler being the middleman is somewhat the point for security/IT teams using that feature.

agressivelyPassive,

And it’s a horrible point. You’re opening up your entire external network traffic to a third party, whose infrastructure isn’t even deployed or controllable in any form by you.

G00d4y0u,

The idea being that it’s similar to using other enterprise solutions, many of which do the same things now.

Zscaler does have lesser settings too, at it’s most basic it can do split tunneling for internal services at an enterprise level and easy user management. Which is a huge plus.

I’d also like to point out that the entire Internet is a third party you have no control over which you open your external traffic to everyday.

The bigger deal would be the internal network, which is also a valid argument.

agressivelyPassive,

I’d also like to point out that the entire Internet is a third party you have no control over which you open your external traffic to everyday.

Not really. Proper TLS enables relatively secure E2E encryption, not perfect, but pretty good. Adding Zscaler means, that my entire outgoing traffic runs over one point. So one single incident in one single provider basically opens up all of my communication. And given that so many large orgs are customers of ZScaler, this company pretty much has a target on its back.

Additionally: I’m in Germany. My Company does a lot of contracting and communication with local, state and federal entities, a large part of that is not super secret, but definitely not public either. And now suddenly an Amercian company, that is legally required to hand over all data to NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. has access to (again) all of my external communication. That’s a disaster. And quite possibly pretty illegal.

coffee_poops,

Password rotation.

Taringano,

Also complex and random requirements for passwords

BradleyUffner,

“your password may not start with a special character” (rage)

Nicadimos,

As a security guy - as soon as I can get federal auditors to agree, I’m getting rid of password expiration.

The main problem is they don’t audit with logic. It’s a script and a feeling. No password expiration FEELS less secure. Nevermind the literal years of data and research. Drives me nuts.

coffee_poops,

It’s counterintuitive. Drives people to use less secure passwords that they’re likely to reuse or to just increment; Password1, Password2, etc.

commandar,

Cite NIST SP 800-63B.

Verifiers SHOULD NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types or prohibiting consecutively repeated characters) for memorized secrets. Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically). However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise of the authenticator.

pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html

I’ve successfully used it to tell auditors to fuck off about password rotation in the healthcare space.

Now, to be in compliance with NIST guidelines, you do also need to require MFA. This document is what federal guidelines are based on, which is why you’re starting to see Federal gov websites require MFA for access.

Either way, I’d highly encourage everyone to give the full document a read through. Not enough people are aware of it and this revision was shockingly reasonable when it came out a year or two ago.

LucyLastic,

A long time ago in a galaxy far away (before the internet was a normal thing to have) I provided over-the-phone support for a large and complex piece of software.

So, people would call up and you had to describe how they could do the thing they needed to do, and if that failed they would have to wait a few days until you went to the site to sort it in person.

The software we supported was not on the approved list for the company I worked for, so you couldn’t use it within the building where the phones were being answered.

Hobo,

I’m absolutely shocked that a company had a software whitelist before the widespread adoption of the internet. Ahead of their time in implementing, and fucking up, software whitelisting!

LucyLastic,

It was for government owned computers, they didn’t want any pirated or virus-infected stuff, and at that point there was no way to lock down such a mish-mash of systems.

The software company (who also do things like run prisons these days) had given permission for us to run the software and given a set of fake data so we could go through the motions when talking people through things, but apparently that wasn’t enough to get it on the list.

vivadanang,

I dunno, gluing usb’s in a super sensitive environment like that is actually logical; on the disc drives - they could disable autoplay as well though removing or gluing them closed would be preferable. USB is just such an easy attack vector where the individual plugging it in may not have skills themselves - it might be easier to bribe cleaning folks for example - or inject a person into a cleaning team. Ideally they would attack multiple nodes of your target’s network via as many avenues as possible; which makes the network and vpn thing just silly indeed; perhaps they were waiting for someone to try something with excellent infosec / firewalls / traffic shaping. yeeeeah lol.

SendMePhotos,

So like… Unplug the mouse and plug in the thumb drive… Bam!

Hobo,

That’s obvious when a mouse or keyboard doesn’t work. OP, and clealy other people in here, don’t really understand the actual attack vector in play. They aren’t using the USB as data storage, they are using as a cellular connected RAT and/or a tool to deploy a RAT to a workstation.

I think gluing usbs is dumb in just about any environment (disable them on the BIOS is the right answer), but attackers aren’t using it to drag and drop files and then physically take the usb with them. They are plugging them into a workstation, or just leaving them in the parking lot and letting other people plug them in, leveraging them to get initial access, and then essentially abandoning them.

For example see stuxnet: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

MrMcGasion,

Pretty easy to make a hub device that you can plug the keyboard into and make it transparent to the user. Could even build in a keylogger to capture direct from the keyboard. The attacker would likely need physical access for that, so it wouldn’t be as convenient as the thumb drive in the parking lot attack vector, but unless you’re using PS/2 peripherals (or gluing those USB devices in too somehow), there’s still a fairly open attack vector there, even if you are disabling unused ports in BIOS.

mystik,

If it’s a secure enough environment, I imagine that there will be monitoring on the device, and the moment a hub shows up that’s not supposed to be there, or any other USB device tree that doesn’t match the approved list, , alarm bells ought to go off. If it’s valuable enough; the attack would be to use a passive device picking up leaky signals on the wire, or even hidden camera watching screen/keyboard.

Hobo,

Yep you’re right, but at least that adds another layer of complexity to their attack. A lot of security controls are at least somewhat situational, and most non-draconian companies have a process to put further mitigations around those exceptions either from increased monitoring or adding additional supplemental controls.

There’s no such thing at perfect security, just better risk mitigation. Slipping in a usb hub between the computer and keyboard while someone isn’t looking is a bit trickier then just plugging in a usb stick. If you disable unused usbs in the bios, instead of trying to do silly stuff like glue them shut, then the attacker has at least been temporarily thwarted if they slot it into a dead port. Aside from the high traffic areas, disabling ALL usb ports in places like datacenters and especially colocated datacenters, can thwart the attack outright as well.

Really from looking through this thread a lot of people seem to be under the misconception that security that isn’t perfect is pointless. It’s like claiming that locking your doors is pointless because lockpicks exists. The point isn’t to keep a sophisticated attack at bay, but rather to keep script kiddies and drive-by attacks from hitting your network. To defend against sophisticated attacks you really have to go a bit crazy, and even then very small slip ups can be disastrous. Ask Microsoft about their root cert getting leaked via a core dump!

I fully acknowledge that many people also work for places with dumbass security controls. Gluing usbs is WAYYYY up there on that list in my opinion. It also looks like a lot of people work at places that have really shitty security teams that haven’t quite figured out that controls are situational and require more thought then, “see checkbox, execute checkbox.”

AtHeartEngineer,
@AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world avatar

SSL proxy, in a company full of developers, so they could sniff traffic. It broke everything. It’s one of the reasons I left that company.

aredditimmigrant,

Worked at a medium sized retail startup as a software engineer where we didn’t have root access to our local laptops, under the guise of “if you fuck it up we won’t be able to fix it” but we only started out with a basic MacBook setup. so every time I wanted to install a tool, ide, or VM I had to make a ticket to IT to come and log in with the password and explain what I was doing.

Eventually, the engineering dept bribed an IT guy to just give us the password and started using it. IT MGMT got pissed when the number of tickets dropped dramatically and realized what was going on.

We eventually came to the compromise that they gave us sudo access with the warning “we’re not backing anything up. If you mess up we’ll have to factory reset the whole machine”. Nobody ever had to factory reboot their machine because we weren’t children… And if there was an issue we just fixed it ourselves

AceFuzzLord,

Imagine that. IT knowing how to fix the issues they caused. What a revolutionary thought! /s

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