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After a certain point, it stops being a clever prank and becomes much more of "my coworker is a jerk". The author of the article got lucky that upper managemen

After a certain point, it stops being a clever prank and becomes much more of "my coworker is a jerk". The author of the article got lucky that upper management decided to put up with his antics rather than fire him for them.

toyg 11y ago
Upper management recognised he was making a very valid point in a very effective way. Kudos to them! Security is a trade-off, but things like locking your machine are so trivial and painless that they should be routine for everyone, no exception.
- atmosx 11y ago
  Still, if the team is not really tight, this kind of prank is dangerous for the team. I can see the situation deteriorate pretty fast. If he was chief of security or something, I'd understand that. I understand the manager too, but a co-worker? No. That said, I use padlock[1] on my laptop, especially in 'hostile' environments and I'm pretty happy with it. [1] http://mizage.com/padlock/ http://mizage.com/padlock/
  - rimantas 11y ago
    I use ctrl+shift+eject and I'm pretty happy with it too.
Beltiras 11y ago
After a certain point "how hard is it to press ctrl-alt-l (or windows-l)?" becomes a competency question.
nraynaud 11y ago
I forbade my team from doing that, your teammates should have your back, not being hostile or publicly shaming each others. I want them to trust their co-worker, to be able to leave each other on their machine to go to the bathroom even if Facebook and mail are logged in. Plus if you don't know who is entering your room you don't have a problem with the keyboard but with your door lock. And if one team member is going rogue, well, he already has the passwords.
- Stefan-H 11y ago
  This mentality is patently wrong to me. You have to realize that maintenance, house keeping, and any manner of other people may enter your area(either legitimate people, or people in disguise). Additionaly, if I were to "go rogue" you better believe I would take advantage of being able to frame someone else and remove attributation from my shoulders. The in-office risk asside, you are also training terrible habits. These habits could lead to your employees leaving their computers unlocked in coffeee shops, at conferences, in their hotel rooms, etc. You have to instill the habit of if you are leaving your computer, you lock you computer into people and make sure they understand why that is.
  - Zaephyr 11y ago
    The author is obviously smart and dedicated - and I’d probably be forced to terminate him. He is an non-supervisory employee, who has not been given administrative access to these computers. He created and deployed a program to other computers without permission that actively thwarted attempts to be shutdown, and modified it get around a GPO that was more than likely pushed out because of what he was doing. This is malware - for a good purpose but still an undesirable application being run without permission. If the company has decided that computers need to be locked when away from keyboard there will be a policy and procedure for reporting and dealing infractions. This won’t be it. While in this case the program might have been mostly harmless, one never knows when a programming error might spin things out of control. It’s clever, funny to some, but if it accidentally resulted in downtime the stuff the flows downhill would come fast and be unpleasant in some organizations. Plus, annoying your teammates isn’t the best idea long term. I know this may seem harsh, but from my experience organizations with the most need for this security would be the least likely to approve of this method.
    - Stefan-H 11y ago
      My coment is not at all talking about what the OP was doing. I think that he went beyond what he ought to have. I am specifically referring to the mentality of "employees should trust their coworkers and can therefore leave their computers unlocked".
chadscira 11y ago
Yes but some companies have strict policies, and access control. Maybe you have a new hire in the office building, or a visitor, or the janitor. It is good practice to always lock your machine. But yes i do agree that he is very lucky that upper management was awesome in this scenario. -- At my last office job we would just flip the mouse buttons, and rotate the display screen. This proved to be very effective, and didn't cause issues with the team.
outworlder 11y ago
Yeah, there are other ways to get the point across. Such as changing the password and leaving a post-it with contact details to get another one. This works specially well if the person in question is a sysadmin, or otherwise empowered, as then the employee can receive proper instructions on how to secure his machine. In this instance, the coworkers don't seem to be particularly clever, or even worried about security. They were terminating the powershell process, which was obviously doing unauthorized actions, then proceeding as usual? Who does that?!

toyg 11y ago

Upper management recognised he was making a very valid point in a very effective way. Kudos to them! Security is a trade-off, but things like locking your machine are so trivial and painless that they should be routine for everyone, no exception.

atmosx 11y ago
Still, if the team is not really tight, this kind of prank is dangerous for the team. I can see the situation deteriorate pretty fast. If he was chief of security or something, I'd understand that. I understand the manager too, but a co-worker? No. That said, I use padlock[1] on my laptop, especially in 'hostile' environments and I'm pretty happy with it. [1] http://mizage.com/padlock/ http://mizage.com/padlock/
- rimantas 11y ago
  I use ctrl+shift+eject and I'm pretty happy with it too.

Beltiras 11y ago

After a certain point "how hard is it to press ctrl-alt-l (or windows-l)?" becomes a competency question.

nraynaud 11y ago

I forbade my team from doing that, your teammates should have your back, not being hostile or publicly shaming each others. I want them to trust their co-worker, to be able to leave each other on their machine to go to the bathroom even if Facebook and mail are logged in. Plus if you don't know who is entering your room you don't have a problem with the keyboard but with your door lock. And if one team member is going rogue, well, he already has the passwords.

Stefan-H 11y ago
This mentality is patently wrong to me. You have to realize that maintenance, house keeping, and any manner of other people may enter your area(either legitimate people, or people in disguise). Additionaly, if I were to "go rogue" you better believe I would take advantage of being able to frame someone else and remove attributation from my shoulders. The in-office risk asside, you are also training terrible habits. These habits could lead to your employees leaving their computers unlocked in coffeee shops, at conferences, in their hotel rooms, etc. You have to instill the habit of if you are leaving your computer, you lock you computer into people and make sure they understand why that is.
- Zaephyr 11y ago
  The author is obviously smart and dedicated - and I’d probably be forced to terminate him. He is an non-supervisory employee, who has not been given administrative access to these computers. He created and deployed a program to other computers without permission that actively thwarted attempts to be shutdown, and modified it get around a GPO that was more than likely pushed out because of what he was doing. This is malware - for a good purpose but still an undesirable application being run without permission. If the company has decided that computers need to be locked when away from keyboard there will be a policy and procedure for reporting and dealing infractions. This won’t be it. While in this case the program might have been mostly harmless, one never knows when a programming error might spin things out of control. It’s clever, funny to some, but if it accidentally resulted in downtime the stuff the flows downhill would come fast and be unpleasant in some organizations. Plus, annoying your teammates isn’t the best idea long term. I know this may seem harsh, but from my experience organizations with the most need for this security would be the least likely to approve of this method.
  - Stefan-H 11y ago
    My coment is not at all talking about what the OP was doing. I think that he went beyond what he ought to have. I am specifically referring to the mentality of "employees should trust their coworkers and can therefore leave their computers unlocked".

chadscira 11y ago

Yes but some companies have strict policies, and access control. Maybe you have a new hire in the office building, or a visitor, or the janitor. It is good practice to always lock your machine. But yes i do agree that he is very lucky that upper management was awesome in this scenario. -- At my last office job we would just flip the mouse buttons, and rotate the display screen. This proved to be very effective, and didn't cause issues with the team.

outworlder 11y ago

Yeah, there are other ways to get the point across. Such as changing the password and leaving a post-it with contact details to get another one. This works specially well if the person in question is a sysadmin, or otherwise empowered, as then the employee can receive proper instructions on how to secure his machine. In this instance, the coworkers don't seem to be particularly clever, or even worried about security. They were terminating the powershell process, which was obviously doing unauthorized actions, then proceeding as usual? Who does that?!