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Bigger tech companies not only do not host important private source code on Github but won't even host on outsourced physical servers. Where I've worked (incl.
by SiVal 8y ago
Bigger tech companies not only do not host important private source code on Github but won't even host on outsourced physical servers. Where I've worked (incl. well-known names), information that we wanted spread to the world could be hosted on trusted external systems (trust still mattered to keep it from being "edited"), but non-public info was always hosted inside a physical building that we owned watched 24/7 by human guards we employed.
- hirsin 8y agoNot entirely true. Microsoft puts (almost? Yet to find anything that isn't) all our code on VSTS which is accessible remotely, without VPN. I've checked in a (very very minor docs) fix to the Windows code base from my Android phone over LTE.
- electronvolt 8y agoYeah, which is hosted on Azure, a data center that Microsoft owns and employs guards for, and secured behind our standard corporate authentication. :) (Source: I work at Microsoft, near the VSTS team.)
- com2kid 8y ago> Yeah, which is hosted on Azure, a data center that Microsoft owns and employs guards for, and secured behind our standard corporate authentication. :) Way back when, Microsoft used to host a bunch of auth servers for banks. A friend of mine mentioned an armed guard in front of the data center for that particular service. I've worked on teams at MS where there was a (non-armed) guard checking everyone who got off the elevator, but before I joined MS I was once left alone in a room full of computers open to the Windows source tree, wearing my "do not leave guest unattended" badge. Mileage might vary and all that.
- electronvolt 8y agoYeah, all I was really saying was that the grandparent's comment and the parent's comment weren't in opposition. Microsoft owns the data center the code lives in and certainly takes care of physical security.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- SiVal 8y agoThat's amazing. Contrast that to my friend who works on code at Apple that's so guarded that he can't even access it from Apple HQ. He has to travel to his office in an unmarked Apple bldg several miles from HQ (in an unmarked van) and access the code from inside the bldg. Any attempt to work on his code outside that bldg, on the Apple employee shuttle for example, will result in immediate firing with possible criminal charges. Admittedly, that's not the usual Apple employee, but the contrast between that and Microsoft's, which may as well be hosted on a set of Chinese night market DVDs, is LOL-worthy.
- nathantotten 8y agoThis has to be something very mission critical like phone encryption. No way this is the norm even at Apple.
- jodrellblank 8y agoLOL-worthy and yet, which company released an OS update with an open root account with no password, patched it in a way that broke file sharing, then a couple of months later released an update with another password bypass bug? Hobbling people with security theatre isn't begetting good or secure code.
- spydum 8y agoOpsec and AppSec usually handled by different teams :)
- saagarjha 8y ago> unmarked van You may think it’s unmarked, but if you know how to spot them they’re very easy to pick out.
- sullyj3 8y agoIf I was an intelligence agency, I would do the trivially obvious thing and only use "unmarked cars" when I didn't care about being spotted, and an actual nondescript vehicle the rest of the time.
- tallanvor 8y agoThe only thing a VPN would do in this case is hiding that you're even accessing VSTS and providing modest proteaction against MitM attacks. You still have to use 2FA to log in, and the code you access is still logged.
- hirsin 8y agoVPN puts you on corpnet. And yes, I'm well familiar with our various account protection techniques (I work on the token server) - I was calling out that some companies trust their systems enough to make it remotely accessible, not saying it's a bad thing that I could be productive on the bus ride home.
- phillipcarter 8y agoMS employee here: Long before the acquisition, we've been hosting important stuff in private GitHub repositories. Including having strategic discussions in those private repositories. We've also done a lot of that stuff in public too. Some might say a bit too much, given that we've had things leaked and/or misinterpreted w.r.t product direction in the past. I still agree with your point, but I believe more of this sort of thing is happening. Lots of stuff that has no real reason to be private is just being open source by default.
- 8_hours_ago 8y ago> Long before the acquisition, we've been hosting important stuff in private GitHub repositories. Including having strategic discussions in those private repositories. Wow! I am very surprised by that. Is that an officially allowed policy? Or is it something that is "don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness"?
- nielsbjerg 8y agoHow so? What was going to be controlled, by whom?
- 8_hours_ago 8y agoI assumed that Microsoft has security policies to ensure that all confidential information (e.g. non-open-source code and strategic discussions) is stored on infrastructure controlled by Microsoft. The company I work at is very careful about keeping our intellectual property on our infrastructure, and I am surprised that a larger company like Microsoft doesn't have similar policies.
- jethro_tell 8y agoMaybe info sec drove the decision to purchase github because that was the easier way to reign in the data leak. =)
- com2kid 8y ago
- hesk 8y agoGithub offers an enterprise version and I know of at least one big company which hosts their code there.
- nerdponx 8y agoNote that this doesn't preclude the possibility of an on-prem Enterprise Github setup.