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

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.

  • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Forcing password expiration does cause people to make shittier passwords. But when their passwords are breached programitically or through social engineering They don’t just sit around valid for years on the dark web waiting for someone to buy them up.

    • body_by_make@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      This requirement forces people who can’t otherwise remember passwords to fall into patterns like (kid’s name)(season)(year), this is a very common password pattern for people who have to change passwords every 90 days or so. Breaching the password would expose the pattern and make it easy enough to guess based off of.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        99% of password theft currently comes from phishing. Most of the people that get fished don’t have a freaking clue they got fished oh look the Microsoft site link didn’t work.

        Complex passwords that never change don’t mean s*** when your users are willing to put them into a website.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s still not in a freaking list that they can run a programmatic attack against. People that give this answer sound like a f****** broken record I swear.

          • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Years ago phishing and 2fa breaches werent as pervasive. Since we can’t all go to pass key right now, nobody’s doing a damn thing about the phishing campaigns. Secops current method of protection is to pay companies that scan the dark web by the lists and offer up if your password’s been owned for a fee.

            That’s a pretty s***** tactic to try to protect your users.

            • body_by_make@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              We’re on the internet, you can say shit.

              If your user is just using johnsmithfall2022 as their password and they update the season and year every time, it’s pretty easy for hackers to identify that pattern and correct it. This is not the solution and it actively makes life worse for everyone involved.

          • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            No never minded people that think that all passwords are being cracked tell me I’m wrong. Lists emails and passwords grabbed from fishing attacks tell me the people that are too lazy to change their passwords and once in awhile don’t deserve the security.

            • glue_snorter@lemmy.sdfeu.org
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              1 year ago

              I’m a native English speaker. I can’t understand your comment. I sense that you have a useful perspective, could you rephrase it so it’s understandable?

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      NIST now recommends watching for suspicious activity and only force rotation when there’s risk of compromise