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Council Sells Security Hole On Ebay

Barence writes "A security expert was stunned to discover a VPN device he'd bought on Ebay automatically connected to a local council's confidential servers. Bought for just 99p for use at work, when plugged in it automatically connected with the login details which had been carelessly left on the device. 'The whole selling point of the device was that it was extremely easy to configure. It's pretty horrific really,' says the intrusion-detection professional. The council says it is 'deeply concerned' by the news, but is confident that 'multiple layers of security have prevented access to systems and data.'"

11 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Layers of Security by FredFredrickson · · Score: 5, Funny

    By layers of security, I'm sure he meant something along the lines of "Even if you can connect to our network printers on the windows server- you can't use them! Heck, we still can't figure out how to use them. Actually if you figure out how to get them to work, can you get the print jobs started? There's probably a couple hundred print jobs waiting.

    Oh and you probably can't access any files on our network, because in this HIGH security office, we don't even have network shares or anything of the like. Nopers, we email documents to eachother. Good luck catching us, dude. LAYERS. LAYERS AND LAYERS of security."

    --
    Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
  2. Re:Anyone keeping count? by clare-ents · · Score: 2, Funny

    the count now reads -2 147 483 647

    --
    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
  3. Re:I don't know... by russotto · · Score: 4, Funny

    Would a security expert really by "stunned" by this? Sounds like business as usual to me.

    Never seen Casablanca, have you?

    Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
    [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
    Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

  4. Re:Layers of Security by Fx.Dr · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...but none of the five bears...

    I dunno, five bears can be pretty scary. I'd be sure to stay away from that network.

  5. Missed opportunity by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 3, Funny

    Shame they didn't think to advertise the stored login on the item's eBay description. They could probably have gotten more than 99p for it.

  6. Re:Layers of Security by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2, Funny

    You didn't read the rest of the article.

    > The council says it is "deeply concerned" by the news, but is confident that
    > "multiple layers of security have prevented access to systems and data."

    The article continues.

    "Indeed, a fax sent by the council to local news outlets later that day confirmed that '[the council's] servers were never breached and we've **CAMILLA P-B IS A HORSEFACE!!!!!!**"

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    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  7. Re:Just like beer by crunch_ca · · Score: 3, Funny

    [Nomenumbra] 0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall.

    Yay, I can hardly wait for the 64-bit port of this application!

  8. Re:Just like beer by xaxa · · Score: 2, Funny

    [Nomenumbra] 0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall.

    Yay, I can hardly wait for the 64-bit port of this application!

    Hopefully it's open source, or I'm in trouble:

    0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 18446744073709551615 bottles of beer on the wall.

  9. Re:my 2 pence by Missing_dc · · Score: 2, Funny

    I could really go for some shaved beaver right about now.

    This being slashdot, finding beavers here is rare, shaved even more so, but an earlier post mentioned Bears. Perhaps they will do for you?

    (I know we should not feed the trolls, but this one sounds really hungry)

    --
    How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
  10. Re:Layers of Security by fyoder · · Score: 2, Funny

    The three bear security system had proven inadequate.

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    Loose lips lose spit.
  11. Re:Layers of Security by TobyWong · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ahh yes, the infamous PC LOAD LETTER firewall! Impervious to all but the most clever hackers.

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    - Toby