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Er, are you sure? [1] If so, how recent is this? > Facebook employees were granted user data access in order to "cut away the red tape that slowed down enginee
by dataflow 3y ago
Er, are you sure? [1] If so, how recent is this?
> Facebook employees were granted user data access in order to "cut away the red tape that slowed down engineers," the book said. "There was nothing but the goodwill of the employees themselves to stop them from abusing their access to users' private information."
> In a presentation to Zuckerberg and the company's top executives, [CSO] Stamos said engineers had abused the access "nearly every month," the book said. At the time, more than 16,000 employees had access to users' private data, the book said.
> Stamos suggested tightening access to fewer than 5,000 employees and fewer than 100 for particularly sensitive information such as passwords. He proposed requiring employees to submit formal requests for access to private data but received pushback from executives. Zuckerberg said changes on the matter were "a top priority" and tasked Stamos with finding a solution and giving an update in a year, the book said.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fired-dozens-abusing-access-user-data-an-ugly-truth-2021-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fired-dozens-abusin...
- lokar 3y agoWhen I was there to work on the main front end (hack/js) you ran a copy as you made changes to it. It had full access to real data. But if you tampered with access control logic in it or otherwise read other users (vs your own or a test user) it would get flagged and you get fired. Happen fairly often.
- dataflow 3y agoYeah that's not "strong technical safeguards". Or good enough.
- lokar 3y agoThey seemed pretty good at catching people
- dataflow 3y agoI hope you never have control over people's data. Being good at catching people after the fact is not the same as being good about securing the data in the first place. Seriously, if you had important information that was leaked, it's kind of irrelevant whether the person who leaked it got fired. You still face the consequences either way.
- Terretta 3y ago> Being good at catching people after the fact is not the same as being good about securing the data in the first place. True, only one of these is future proof, and maybe not the one you think.
- jeffbee 3y agoYeah that is not even remotely good enough. Processes running under the authority of individual engineers cannot have access to user data. Processes with access to user data can only run reviewed and committed code with verified production builds. There can't be user data just laying around on hosts were unix superuser permissions can be used to access it.
- lokar 3y agoNothing is laying around. Everything is remote API calls authenticated as the engineer running the code.