IT BS thread

Oof. People think about security all wrong.

 

I spent some time in the semiconductor industry and got used to separating networks. Our equipment had its own network that we would not mix with the factory network, and the factory networks we connected with were always separated from the rest of the company networks. Then I went to another well-known Austin company that had a completely flat network. I was appalled that I could get into a factory control system from my desk without going through some kind of gateway. I thought they were kidding at first. They recognized that it might be a risk, but the cost of changing it just wasn't worth it to them, and they had made a conscious decision to make it flat. We never had an incident that I knew of, but I'm sure it was only a matter of time.

 

Our production network is physically separated from all lower environments. Each lower environment is logically separated from each other, and each application's development enclave is logically separated from every other enclave. Nothing gets to the Internet without approval, and it's secure tunneled. No servers can directly access the Internet. Admin right usage on any system (*nix, Windows, mainframe, etc) disables all web browsers' abilities to exit the external firewall. Local login disables network access (can't even hit shared drives).

From there we get really strict. I've fired developers for creating service accounts that they then granted interactive login to. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, happens that we can't have a full audit trail on it.

 

https://arstechnica.com/information...the-same-teamviewer-password-and-no-firewall/

 

This surprises me in no way what so ever. I've be a thorn in the businesse's side more times than I can remember. "wHaT dO yOu meAn I HaVe TO uPgraDE My ComPUterS?!?!?" Me, "I know DOS, Windows 3, 95, 98, XP, Vista, 7 were good in their day, but their day is past. And, I understand that the vendor has gone out of business and we'll have to upgrade the entire system for a lot of money. But, do you want the hack of your system to be why we are in the news?"

 

Fucking dipshits GOT WHAT THEY DESERVED.

 

im doing a subconscious experiment on my boss by setting his application background to a calming light blue.

 

I used to use admin tools to adjust cursor speeds. Mondays were slow, and Wednesdays were zippy.

 

I now understand why anytime there's an issue with Windows at my work, they just replace the whole damn machine.

The touchpad on my kid's laptop stopped working. Windows (10) reports "the device is working properly", but, there's no response from input at all. Not even a mouse pointer. I boot up Linux, the device works fine. Back to Windows, comb through as many settings related to input, everything appears fine and activated. The touchscreen works. External mice work. F it, I'll reinstall the driver. I've been staring at the "Getting Windows ready" screen for 20 minutes and counting...

Also, on my network, I have many devices including Linux, Android, Win 7, Win 10 and occasionally iOS. Only Win 10 seems to randomly disconnect from WiFi.

 

It feels like they've hidden more and more of the actual useful status info and error messages.

And networking is wonky. Putting something into the new settings app doesn't seem to set it in the old adapter config, for example.

 

I don't suppose there's any equivalent to dmesg or journalctl for Windows?

And Windows is just now FINALLY restarting since my last post.

 

Late to the party since I don't social media much, but SolarWinds and the Gov knew about this for at least 6 months prior to FireEye making it public.

 

There is. I think it's under computer management and then event viewer.

 

Nice. I'll take a look next time.

I told Windows to uninstall the driver. After the long reboot, the driver is still there. However, the touchpad works again

 

Lol. Maybe it removed a corrupt one and replaced it with a less corrupt one. Mysterious.

 

I do this every day. It's much easier to just swap it out in a few minutes then place it on a rack behind my desk and re-image it while I use my time for better things.

Win 10 always has fun stuff. I had to delete a local users profile and I had not done it since win 7. After looking for all the obvious stuff I went back to my desk and googled it.
systempropertiesadvanced is what for you look to have.

 

Yeah...software developer here with lots of tools. Every time IT decides to take the “easy” route and replace or re-image it’s a lost day for me. Lots of tools to install, configure, source code repos to clone, builds to verify, etc. Our help desk is incentivized to resolve issues quickly. If they just re-image they can close the ticket and get their reward for a job done quickly.

 

Not our system. It is a custom image. If any additional software is needed we can remotely install it thru a web app. easy peasy.

The only downside is it takes 3-4 hours for the image and then updates to get pushed thru. I usually have a couple of computers ready to go.

 

My son was hired right out of school into an entry position in our desktop support section. He says he can rip a profile to backup, reimage to the latest gold disk version, and restore the profile faster than troubleshooting what is usually a misconfiguration caused by installing developer tools or non-standard software.

Their focus is on time, not accuracy or quality. Get ‘em in and get ‘em out....next ticket.