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Searching For Backdoors From Rogue IT Staff
WHiTe VaMPiRe writes "When IT staff are terminated under duress, there is often justification for a complete infrastructure audit to reduce future risk to a company. Here is an exploration of the steps necessary to maintain security." Of course the first piece of advice is to basically assume you've been rooted. Ouch.
to audit your system under the assumption you've been rooted should happen once a year at a minimum anyway, not just when you suspect a rogue employee left on bad terms. I've worked at places that never changed passwords and I found former employee logins enabled from months ago..
Fuck Ajit Pai
Dead man's switch.
If you're seriously considering this as a possibility, I'd say treat it like a DR drill. Burn everything down to bare metal and restore only the data. It's the only way to be sure...
However, before taking my advice, I'd suggest you get your boss to sign off on it, whichever way. Present a list of options from 'ignore it' to 'burn everything' and have them pick. This way, whatever happens, you're covered.
One of many reasons CEOs are given golden parachutes are to keep them quiet about trade secrets and certain contacts. Whether or not that happens is debatable, but discretion is basically paid for.
Why not give similar parachutes to IT admins to follow these unwritten practices? If the CEOs are the frontmens, ITs are the infrastructure of the organization. Treat them like gatekeepers instead of disposable footmen. They have the keys to the castle. And all the secret entrances.
Of course the first piece of advice is to basically assume you've been rooted. Ouch.
That's only painful if you didn't have well thought out policies in place beforehand.*
*for everything but the edge cases, of course.
who doesn't have a clue what you're telling him and watch him veto this because his budget would take a hit. Make notes of what you discussed save emails etc for evidence when said evil admin hacks in and trashes your servers, domain etc. In other words cover your ass.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Yeah, that will really solve the problem of time bombs and dead man's switches...
How about not disgruntling the employee in the first place?
Prison sentence.
Seriously trying to do something like install a dead man switch to fuck over your employer would be the height of stupidity. Wonderful way to end up with a sentence that make the Child's thing look lenient. While I realize that pedantic geeks think they could cover their tracks that isn't the case. They don't have to prove it was you beyond any and all doubt, they just have to prove it was you beyond a reasonable doubt. If they can show means, motive, and opportunity, they've gone a long way to that.
Sounds like the real answer if for companies to get rid of egomaniac assholes in IT before they are in a position to cause trouble.
Basically, if you put yourself in a position where you have to fire your IT staff then you are a moron. Always do background checks because you are going to be giving these people the keys to the city.
The point being, you don't always "put yourself" in that position. Sometimes shit happens.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
All of those problems could be handled in a variety of ways with a competant HR department.
Isn't that an oxymoron, even if it was spelled correctly.
Who is John Galt?
As an (ex-)employee, it would be to your advantage to maintain good relations with your previous employer anyway, unless you don't plan on ever using them as a reference.
That's a really good catch. Well done.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
He knew how to program a logic bomb and how to cover his tracks by removing it from the source, but he didn't have the smarts to change the source file's time stamp? Sounds like an obvious step to take -- not that I'd ever do anything like that, but seriously, changing a time stamp isn't rocket science.
Facts have a liberal bias.
You get what you pay for. You hire for the lowest possible salary and treat your professionals like unskilled laborers, well, don't be surprised. A professional would never dream of doing something like this - but then again a professional would not work for peanuts either.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
How about a radical idea of treating employees as people, with respect and dignity, and they will treat you likewise in return? I know I'm stepping a little above the topic, as you asked what to do when you do fire people suddenly without a cause. Please bear with me and don't "escort me out" yet. The way employees are treated in the U.S nowadays is despicable. It would be unacceptable just a few decades ago in this very country, and it is still unacceptable in many parts of the world. An executive firing employees without good cause would and should be roughed up good after work to freshen their understanding of "immoral". American society should make it socially unacceptable, with after-work consequences, to fire people without a good cause, regardless of "laws' bought by corporations in the last decades.
Yeah, that will really solve the problem of time bombs and dead man's switches...
How about not disgruntling the employee in the first place?
Oh, grow the hell up and welcome the nature of life.
Though there are work places that indeed are festering, pedantic shit holes, my experience has been that people who are disgruntled enough to commit a stupidity don't necessarily work in a place causing them to be so disgruntled in the first place. They are simply stupid assholes who either have a sense of victim-hood or are too arrogant and socially incompetent so as to pop a vein at the slightest work-related discomfort.
Work is work, it's not supposed to be pleasant all the time. We get paid to do work that has a certain level of difficulty, both technological and sociological. It has always been so, it will always be so. Half of the time the fault of being disgruntled is in you. How you handle that shit is ultimately one's responsibility.
If you are a mature person with a sense of, oh I dunno, fucking professionalism, you will never get *that* disgruntled no matter the working conditions. If you are not a mature professional and you cannot tell professionalism from shit flinging monkey riding a banana-shaped tricycle, then you'll inevitably construe any slightest difficulty into an affront, building each one of this up, turning you into an arrogant, festering boil of disgruntled human suckage and social incompetence.
And for those who truly voted that post as insightful, man, grow up, really.
I wonder, that... if you had no way of getting back through the firewall... I wonder how you could know the credentials weren't deleted? :)
Not really, HR is generally highly competent, just not at what you think they're there for. Most companies have HR employees specifically so that they can be useless and make it as hard as possible for employees to get there benefits, preferably quitting before they're eligible. Sure it's a dumb way to run a business, but it happens. Usually if there's any corruption in a company it's found in HR first and spreads elsewhere.
"f you are a mature person with a sense of, oh I dunno, fucking professionalism, you will never get *that* disgruntled no matter the working conditions."
Oh please, and you're telling OTHER people to grow up? Sounds to me like you've hardly had any work experience in the real world. It doesn't matter how professional you are - everyone has certain buttons that can be pushed and in a long working career believe me , someone WILL push them eventually.
Also you might disguise your young age a bit better if you didn't swear every paragraph.