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Working as a developer inside large enterprise is increasingly intolerable by the day, made possible by tools such as crowdstrike falcon. By the time your works

Working as a developer inside large enterprise is increasingly intolerable by the day, made possible by tools such as crowdstrike falcon. By the time your workstation is saddled with endpoint security, DLP, zero trust networking, antivirus, etc. it barely functions. And you can get in trouble for doing anything. Installing tree from homebrew can get you flagged on some naughty list where you have to justify why you needed tree of all things.

mrjin 4y ago
Exactly. For competent developer, such tool is nothing but wasting time. The reason is simple: if they don't know what they are doing or cannot be trusted, they shouldn't be hired in the first place. But I do understand why those are in place: 1. There are lots of those who have no idea what they are doing in the organization. And/or 2. Some high up who have no idea what they are doing want to show their value. Such move typically happens after someone with Chief Security Officer or similar get hired. Or they do know but simply don't care.
- mberning 4y ago
  I think there is a lot of value in these tools for the enterprise. Even if it is just CYA insurance. If somebody steals data but you have a DLP tool you can just blame the vendor. My biggest issue with the tools is they have an insanely deleterious impact on performance and the harsh scrutiny applied has a chilling effect on employees. It turns people into drones that do not dare step outside the norm.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    > If somebody steals data but you have a DLP tool you can just blame the vendor. This is just about the main thing that bugs me with this kind of tool: sure you can blame the vendor, but the data is still stolen. And companies are happy to have checked that box and won't bother implementing actually useful policies.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    This is hands down one of the scariest and depressing comments I've ever read on HN.
    - mberning 4y ago
      Sadly it is becoming the norm. Even at small and medium sized companies.
LelouBil 4y ago
I recently finished an internship in a large company. I wanted to install netcat to troubleshoot networking issues between windows and docker containers I was running. Right when it was downloaded from scoop, it got deleted and I got a scary automated email. My manager called me immediately, in the end it was cleared quickly but I did learn to be very carefull about what I try to download. At first I didn't understand why netcat was being detected by the AV but then I remembered it can be used to set up a reverse shell.
- Aissen 4y ago
  Any programmer that knows how to code (and you seemed to have docker installed, so I'm sure you do too) should be able to create their own reverse shell from a few minutes to a couple of hours. Hence the blocking of netcat in this context (developer workstation) makes no sense.
  - mberning 4y ago
    Or so many other tools. If you can open a socket, you can transfer data.
  - unmole 4y ago
    I once worked for a large telecom equipment vendor whose IT policies banned the installation of dangerous software like Wireshark.
- Anunayj 4y ago
  Gosh netcat binaries on Windows get picked up by Windows Defender as malacious, it's so infuriating.

mrjin 4y ago

Exactly. For competent developer, such tool is nothing but wasting time. The reason is simple: if they don't know what they are doing or cannot be trusted, they shouldn't be hired in the first place. But I do understand why those are in place: 1. There are lots of those who have no idea what they are doing in the organization. And/or 2. Some high up who have no idea what they are doing want to show their value. Such move typically happens after someone with Chief Security Officer or similar get hired. Or they do know but simply don't care.

mberning 4y ago
I think there is a lot of value in these tools for the enterprise. Even if it is just CYA insurance. If somebody steals data but you have a DLP tool you can just blame the vendor. My biggest issue with the tools is they have an insanely deleterious impact on performance and the harsh scrutiny applied has a chilling effect on employees. It turns people into drones that do not dare step outside the norm.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  > If somebody steals data but you have a DLP tool you can just blame the vendor. This is just about the main thing that bugs me with this kind of tool: sure you can blame the vendor, but the data is still stolen. And companies are happy to have checked that box and won't bother implementing actually useful policies.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  This is hands down one of the scariest and depressing comments I've ever read on HN.
  - mberning 4y ago
    Sadly it is becoming the norm. Even at small and medium sized companies.

LelouBil 4y ago

I recently finished an internship in a large company. I wanted to install netcat to troubleshoot networking issues between windows and docker containers I was running. Right when it was downloaded from scoop, it got deleted and I got a scary automated email. My manager called me immediately, in the end it was cleared quickly but I did learn to be very carefull about what I try to download. At first I didn't understand why netcat was being detected by the AV but then I remembered it can be used to set up a reverse shell.

Aissen 4y ago
Any programmer that knows how to code (and you seemed to have docker installed, so I'm sure you do too) should be able to create their own reverse shell from a few minutes to a couple of hours. Hence the blocking of netcat in this context (developer workstation) makes no sense.
- mberning 4y ago
  Or so many other tools. If you can open a socket, you can transfer data.
- unmole 4y ago
  I once worked for a large telecom equipment vendor whose IT policies banned the installation of dangerous software like Wireshark.
Anunayj 4y ago
Gosh netcat binaries on Windows get picked up by Windows Defender as malacious, it's so infuriating.