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Good advice: "Employees should not be storing anything that could harm a firm reputationally on company servers. Training around this should be provided by org

Good advice: "Employees should not be storing anything that could harm a firm reputationally on company servers. Training around this should be provided by organisations to all their staff."

faeyanpiraat 6y ago
People just dont care about any of that. I cringe every time I see how average users use their computers (sysadmin experience). And I don’t blame them, most of the time it works, even if they do it wrong.
nix23 6y ago
I never though about telling other employees not to store porn on my servers, i will bring that up in the next meeting...i bet it's gonna be a blast :)
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  In the company I worked for hackers uploaded porn to our disks so I was told. Not sure why maybe they wanted the free disk-space. Or maybe they were planning to blackmail us. Or maybe it was the IT admin who got caught and then claimed it was the hackers.
  - curryst 6y ago
    Some pirate release groups will compromise servers with public IPs to use as FTP hosts. The people that actually post the torrents then download from the FTP host, create a torrent, and upload it to the tracker (from their own PC). Those hosts usually have fat internet pipes, allowing a bunch of people to download a copy over FTP at once, letting you claim credit for the first rip. There's also probably less of a paper trail; most of the hosts I'm aware of require some kind of ID, and would almost certainly hand that data over to law enforcement.
    - da_big_ghey 6y ago
      In my best knowing such topsites are in most cases using colo with excellent peering. In comparing, most company file shares are local in office for best transfer speed. A other possible similarity situation is useing for XDCC bots: such bots have similar idea of usage compromised machine but are mostly lower grade computer than a topsite.
    - galaxyLogic 6y ago
      That explains it probably. I now remember the IT-admin mentioning FTP. Thanks for the insight
soneil 6y ago
What people store is entirely irrelevant to the scam. It doesn't matter if you've never seen a porn flick, never visited an adult site. The template is to get a credentials dump, email the user's email, offer the password from the dump as proof (most people re-use the same password). I know what you've been watching (no they don't), I recorded you on cam (doesn't matter if you have a camera or not). It doesn't have to be bullet-proof. It only has to work once to pay off.
- FDSGSG 6y ago
  This has nothing to do with the extortion scheme discussed in the article.
thomastjeffery 6y ago
The last time I had a "work-laptop", I was fired (for boring reasons) suddenly and without prior notice, and had to immediately hand my laptop over. I wasn't even allowed to go back to my desk and gather my things, because the HR manager at that time was so paranoid. I'm pretty confident I didn't have anything personal on there, but just to be certain I wasn't leaking passwords, I did a quick rm -rf ~ &; disown Point being: employers have all the leverage over their hardware, and you never know how or when they will use it. Encryption is your friend.
- llampx 6y ago
  You had time to enter that command (with or without sudo) before they took your machine back? That said, I've heard of cases where an ex-employee was sued by their employer for deleting the drive, for example salespeople who maintain contact lists.
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    So I was told I was at a 1-on-1 meeting with my boss, and that the HR person needed to be part of that meeting. I brought the laptop in expecting to take notes or whatever. I essentially got lucky, but they were a bit concerned when they saw me hastily typing, even though they had already revoked all of my credentials.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Isn't the takeaway "never store or do anything on company hardware that you want to keep to yourself"? I wouldn't trust personal material to a company laptop even if it was encrypted.
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    Yes, but my main concern was the data from my password manager, which existed elsewhere. I don't remember for certain, but I may have set my password store to be permanently open, which leaves a copy of the encryption key in the user directory. Really, the practice should already be, "if you have data you care about, then always have offsite backups".

Good advice: "Employees should not be storing anything that could harm a firm reputationally on company servers. Training around this should be provided by organisations to all their staff."

faeyanpiraat 6y ago

People just dont care about any of that. I cringe every time I see how average users use their computers (sysadmin experience). And I don’t blame them, most of the time it works, even if they do it wrong.

nix23 6y ago

I never though about telling other employees not to store porn on my servers, i will bring that up in the next meeting...i bet it's gonna be a blast :)

galaxyLogic 6y ago
In the company I worked for hackers uploaded porn to our disks so I was told. Not sure why maybe they wanted the free disk-space. Or maybe they were planning to blackmail us. Or maybe it was the IT admin who got caught and then claimed it was the hackers.
- curryst 6y ago
  Some pirate release groups will compromise servers with public IPs to use as FTP hosts. The people that actually post the torrents then download from the FTP host, create a torrent, and upload it to the tracker (from their own PC). Those hosts usually have fat internet pipes, allowing a bunch of people to download a copy over FTP at once, letting you claim credit for the first rip. There's also probably less of a paper trail; most of the hosts I'm aware of require some kind of ID, and would almost certainly hand that data over to law enforcement.
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    In my best knowing such topsites are in most cases using colo with excellent peering. In comparing, most company file shares are local in office for best transfer speed. A other possible similarity situation is useing for XDCC bots: such bots have similar idea of usage compromised machine but are mostly lower grade computer than a topsite.
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    That explains it probably. I now remember the IT-admin mentioning FTP. Thanks for the insight

soneil 6y ago

What people store is entirely irrelevant to the scam. It doesn't matter if you've never seen a porn flick, never visited an adult site. The template is to get a credentials dump, email the user's email, offer the password from the dump as proof (most people re-use the same password). I know what you've been watching (no they don't), I recorded you on cam (doesn't matter if you have a camera or not). It doesn't have to be bullet-proof. It only has to work once to pay off.

FDSGSG 6y ago
This has nothing to do with the extortion scheme discussed in the article.

thomastjeffery 6y ago

The last time I had a "work-laptop", I was fired (for boring reasons) suddenly and without prior notice, and had to immediately hand my laptop over. I wasn't even allowed to go back to my desk and gather my things, because the HR manager at that time was so paranoid. I'm pretty confident I didn't have anything personal on there, but just to be certain I wasn't leaking passwords, I did a quick rm -rf ~ &; disown Point being: employers have all the leverage over their hardware, and you never know how or when they will use it. Encryption is your friend.

llampx 6y ago
You had time to enter that command (with or without sudo) before they took your machine back? That said, I've heard of cases where an ex-employee was sued by their employer for deleting the drive, for example salespeople who maintain contact lists.
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  So I was told I was at a 1-on-1 meeting with my boss, and that the HR person needed to be part of that meeting. I brought the laptop in expecting to take notes or whatever. I essentially got lucky, but they were a bit concerned when they saw me hastily typing, even though they had already revoked all of my credentials.
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
Isn't the takeaway "never store or do anything on company hardware that you want to keep to yourself"? I wouldn't trust personal material to a company laptop even if it was encrypted.
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  Yes, but my main concern was the data from my password manager, which existed elsewhere. I don't remember for certain, but I may have set my password store to be permanently open, which leaves a copy of the encryption key in the user directory. Really, the practice should already be, "if you have data you care about, then always have offsite backups".