3 ms·

malice or stupidity? FTA: "These tools are only available to our superhero as the power they hold should not be available to simple administrators." Then the

• jlgaddis 11y ago
  Yeah, sorry, I was speaking of exactly what you mentioned: that the "fix" was to simply change the username (which, of course, isn't a "fix" at all). They didn't fix it at all, they simply tried to "re-hide" the hidden account.
• mjevans 11y ago
  The existence of such an account isn't the WTF worthy feature. The lack of documentation for said account is. It might also be a good idea to have a fail-safe for using the account. For example, if an Administrator level account just logged /in/ (within the last 5 min) then allow field service login. The fail-safe would be the inverse, if /no one/ has logged in within 72 hours allow field service.
• protomyth 11y ago
  "These tools are only available to our superhero as the power they hold should not be available to simple administrators." Yeah, I tend to add companies that make statements like this to my banned vendor list. Its up there with telling me that I have to pay GSA pricing instead of Educational prices because we're a tribal community college or charging for firmware upgrades to fix bugs for servers.
  • egypturnash 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's a quote from the person documenting the backdoor, not a public statement.
• mschuster91 11y ago
  What about this scheme: 1) every hour the backdoor password is randomized 2) the backdoor password is encrypted using a strong cipher set, with a public key. The private key is held by the manufacturer HQ. The encrypted password is made accessible (if it's encrypted with a 4096 bit key, not even the NSA should be capable of decrypting it). 3) In case of fire, on-site troubleshooter breaks the glass eh emails the encrypted key to HQ, where it's decrypted by someone with access to the HSM with the private key on it and then dictated by phone to the on-site troubleshooter. Also, after troubleshooting, HQ supplies the system with a new public key and swaps the old one on the HSM.
  • thephyber 11y ago
    I don't see what this has to do with your comment's parent. Also, there is no such thing as "not even the NSA should be capable of decrypting it" without also mentioning a timeline. Everything is theoretically decryptable in the future (by the NSA or by non-state actors) assuming computing power grows as time goes on. The supercomputer currently in my pocket is capable of more computing power than all of the digital computers in the world combined the year the NSA was first created. If quantum computing turns out to break all traditional symmetric and asymmetric encryption (as some many suspect is possible), it likely doesn't matter how many bits your encryption scheme uses -- it will eventually get broken if that's the desire of your adversary. Also, I see a few potential problems with your scheme. What happens if the HQ gets hacked and all private keys and public keys are leaked (say, by an adversarial nation-state)? The device becomes useless from a security standpoint until a software/firmware upgrade occurs, and then there's no guarantee that HQ didn't have an advanced persistent threat installed. By opening a hidden "hero" account at all, you are introducing additional attack surface area that doesn't need to exist. There are some devices that simply should not have backdoors. The more we allow companies to backdoor products and not pay (criminal punishments, civil punishments, customer/public/press backlash), the more we will end up suffering from insecure systems in the future.