Fired Techie Created Virtual Chaos At Pharma Co.

itwbennett writes "Using a secret vSphere console, Jason Cornish, formerly an IT staffer at the U.S. subsidiary of drug-maker Shionogi, wiped out most of the company's computer infrastructure earlier this year. Cornish, 37, pleaded guilty Tuesday to computer intrusion charges in connection with the attack."

Comments

Re:Protect systems from rogue admins too?

[mallyn]

Good advise; thanks

Here is one small step that was taken by a high end hosting provider

All the systems had locked root passwords; nobody knew the actual root passwords; and they were different for each system.

All root is done via sudo except for the system console, which is in the locked server room

To gain sudo access, this is what happens

First you go onto a secure database that is tied in with the trouble ticket system. You log in using a token. You request root access to server x. The system checks to see that you are supposed to be able to have root for server x and it checks to see that you are working on a currently open trouble ticket for an application on server x.

If the secure database is happy, it sends a message to another secure server (in a different machine room). That system, which has yet another secure database, pulls an ssh private key from the database, installs it as a ssh private key in order to do an ssh shell session with the server you want to get on. That session runs a script that changes the /etc/sudoers to add your name. Along with that, it sets off a cron job that forces the /etc/sudoers fill back to its original configuration after a set ammount of time.

You log in, do sudo, and do your stuff. All logging is done to what I call a toilet paper machine (paper log) in yet another secure room. You are through and log off. You close the ticket. The entire process as described above is done but to restore the /etc/sudoers file back to the way it was. Even if you 'forget' to close the ticket, the timer cron noted above will still revoke your access to sudo and send an email to security.

The secure database servers noted above, each located in its own secure location, require two people authentication to access root. For those machines, the root password is split in half. One half is known by each of two key people. They both need to log in at the same time.

This is about the most paranoid root access that I am aware of.