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At work one of our most commonly used libraries prints it's connection string (including the plain text password, username and database) in the log files on deb
by deallocator 8y ago
At work one of our most commonly used libraries prints it's connection string (including the plain text password, username and database) in the log files on debug level (which I often see as the configured level).
When I pointed it out they told me it was intentional, and that attackers wouldn't go to the log files anyway if they could acces the system.
I gave up on the discussion at that point
- KeitIG 8y agoMaybe you should explain them there is a reason why passwords input is hidden in terminals: to avoid them being kept in ~/.bash_history. It is exactly the same problem.
- ComodoHacker 8y agoThere's another argument that might work in GP's case. A fair share of successful attacks were successful not because the attackers actually broke something on their well-guarded target. But because they used credentials obtained from other poorly defended systems.
- ComodoHacker 8y agoI was about to suggest you should've reported that to CSO, then I realized most probably you don't have one.
- anf 8y agoYou should quit. I know you have reasons, but continuing to work at a place like this is not ethical.
- inteleng 8y agoQuitting is also slightly unethical.
- struppi 8y agoQuitting is not unethical at all. You are not required to stay with any company.
- anf 8y agoIf you can prevent a company from acting unethically and you have the capacity to do so, are you not ethically obligated to try? (switching sides of argument, I know)
- anf 8y agofair point. my thoughts were that spending your time building $10 widgets and getting paid $5 by someone who is negligent with their use of people's passwords is akin to working for a company that pollutes public waters: some of your paycheck is "tainted" by the dangers you put others into, and you are smart enough to understand it. in that sense, quitting seems like a non-act, because you stop acting unethically. I'm guessing you're referring to someone's ability to actually fix it -- in the case of logs, you can make a pretty simple regex to strip out all kinds of PII, and there really are a lot of arguments (e.g. proactively reducing cost of security audits -- if someone is reviewing your logs to figure out what happened, they might not want to see customer data).
- Grangar 8y agoIf anything I'd vouch for leaking to a data protection watchdog if nothing gets done about it.
- deallocator 8y agoShould probably clarify I'm not talking about client passwords being logged; just the credentials required to read just about anything in the database