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ReverendHammer posted:This is an exchange I have with customers far too often for my liking: In all fairness, I just had a site that DID leave something vitally important broken for 6 months and their district manager WILL kill them and eat them once he gets the email I sent him.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 00:13 |
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"This is ReverendHammer, how can I help you?"
"Yeah, on the website (some random thing that's broken)"
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| # ? May 18, 2013 20:04 |
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CrzyDTpBoy posted:puts Windows boxes on random networks that may or may not be using WPA2. Those three things alone are enough for a targeted attack. So ensure that all machines run a software firewall that requires admin rights to disable, provide policies that block all inbound connections except those from the IP ranges that the company uses internally and the VPN endpoint, and ensure your machines have all up-to-date security updates as part of your patching schedule. CrzyDTpBoy posted:exposes the endpoint of the VPN concentrator Exposes as in reveals its address? It should be assumed that the address is known when designing security measures - otherwise you are relying on security by obscurity. CrzyDTpBoy posted:split-configuration configs Are you referring to having multiple machines that communicate with each other both being company owned and both being at the remote site communicating over the insecure wireless network? If so, then as I mentioned before, firewall rules would stop them from being able to communicate except over the VPN, eliminating any major issues. CrzyDTpBoy posted:Come on now, the risk on a wired network is minuscule compared to wireless. There's a chance someone will torture me for my passwords, but that doesn't mean I might as well change them all to password1. The torture is a fair point (  ) but generally you're far more likely to have people write down and leave their password around the place (without changing it) or copying data to external media and losing it.CrzyDTpBoy posted:I'm not saying it's a completely necessary policy, but there are a whole lot of potential vectors cut off by disallowing wifi. Fair enough, I just think that it is unnecessarily restrictive when good policy should prevent most of those factors being a risk in the first place. You're effectively limiting the locations in which your staff can work remotely, which may mean you miss out on some productivity benefits. Out of curiosity, what is your view on VPN over mobile data networks (ie 3G) etc? It isn't shared with other users directly like an unsecured wireless connection, but there's still the possibility that someone may try and tap the connection. I still think that my hotel wired data connection scenario is valid as well.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 01:29 |
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You're hilarious if you don't know that forcing them to use wired internet means plugging into their wireless router with a cable.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 01:34 |
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Casao posted:You're hilarious if you don't know that forcing them to use wired internet means plugging into their wireless router with a cable. Yes because you always have physical access to the wireless router. Especially in hotels or out at client sites. Edit: The point is that you should be able to provide secure access regardless of the intermediate network, because you should always assume that any aspect of the connection that is not directly controlled by the company is suspect (if you have security concerns with internal aspects of the network then that is a different issue altogether). Maelstrm fucked around with this message at Apr 24, 2009 around 02:10 |
| # ? Apr 24, 2009 02:05 |
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Isn't the entire loving point of a VPN to provide secure access regardless of the intermediate network? This whole tangent of deciding what networks you deign to allow as intermediaries to your VPN just strikes me as IT making policies for the sake of making policies, not a reasonable security measure.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 02:18 |
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Maelstrm posted:Yes because you always have physical access to the wireless router. Especially in hotels or out at client sites. I'm sorry if you didn't get that I meant at home. You're right, I shouldn't assume that people would pick up on the implication.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 02:18 |
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Maelstrm posted:Exposes as in reveals its address? It should be assumed that the address is known when designing security measures - otherwise you are relying on security by obscurity. I meant specifically for targeted attacks. If you're looking for an endpoint of an institution with a ton of IP space and IDSs, wouldn't it be a lot easier to just find someone using the wifi to connect from the coffee shop down the street? quote:Are you referring to having multiple machines that communicate with each other both being company owned and both being at the remote site communicating over the insecure wireless network? Meant to say split-tunnel, where only traffic destined for the remote LAN hits the tunneling interface. quote:Out of curiosity, what is your view on VPN over mobile data networks (ie 3G) etc? I don't even have a problem with VPN over wifi. In the end, security is about reaching an acceptable level of risk without impacting usability. There are scenarios where "as secure as possible" is goal #1. If that's what you're looking for, a no-wifi policy is completely justifiable.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 02:52 |
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I think you're all missing the point, which is that the user was asking IT for help with a network that they shouldn't have been using, even for non-security reasons.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 03:02 |
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Casao posted:You're hilarious if you don't know that forcing them to use wired internet means plugging into their wireless router with a cable. Don't forget that someone (I think it's Asus) make a little wireless bridge box that you can connect to your laptop via ethernet
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 09:22 |
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Lum posted:Don't forget that someone (I think it's Asus) make a little wireless bridge box that you can connect to your laptop via ethernet Lots of people make wireless bridges.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 11:04 |
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Got this one this morningquote:When I login to the New SharePoint site h11p://ourintranetsite.com/KPT/2009...are%20Docs.aspx Uhh, isn't that the point of a password lockout policy?
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 14:10 |
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gwon posted:Lots of people make wireless bridges. The one I have in mind is about the size of a couple of thumbdrives and is marketed for use with laptops that only have ethernet, and thus would be a bit easier for the only slightly technical users to find. You know the sort, the sort who know just enough to cause you all the problems.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 14:51 |
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ab0z posted:I think you're all missing the point, which is that the user was asking IT for help with a network that they shouldn't have been using, even for non-security reasons. Look, are you going to try to be all rational every time we get in a fight over something peripheral? If so, maybe you shouldn't be in IT, buddy! ..eh, it's a theme for the thread. There's no fighting it.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 14:51 |
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penga86 posted:Got this one this morning Is this after one failed attempt? If so that's pretty dumb.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 14:57 |
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Midelne posted:Look, are you going to try to be all rational every time we get in a fight over something peripheral? If so, maybe you shouldn't be in IT, buddy! I'm pretty sure we all got that it was over someone else's network (I hope so, anyway), but it sparked a discussion on the topic anyway.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 14:58 |
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Adding some more content: We house a system called OPERA. It's designed for hotels and hospitality enviornments. Sometimes, the help desk doesn't catch the name, and it turns to OPRAH. ===========xxxxxxxxxx================= Fri 04-Jul-08 02:35p ====================================== INCIDENT NUMBER: 32074769 REQUIRE IMMEDIATE CALLBACK?:YES NAME: USER PLACE: LOCATION RESORT (NAME) PHONE: (XXX)XXX-XXXX x PROFILE NAME: USER NAME CURRENT JOB WITH COMPANY: GUEST SERVICES REPORTED PROBLEM: OPRAH FRESES IN THE MIDDLE OF HELPING A CUSTOMER. SYSTEM PROBLEM OCCURED: FRONT DESK ON APRAH AND RESERVICES ADDITIONAL INFO: PLEASE CALL.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 16:20 |
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the littlest prince posted:Is this after one failed attempt? If so that's pretty dumb. Oh no, i went downstairs and watched him do it. Typed in a 8 character password wrong three times in a row. The Service Desk said he calls in at least once every couple of days because he's locked himself out the old fashioned way. Did I mention he is a developer?
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 18:36 |
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nullandvoid posted:Adding some more content: I find 'freses' to be more damning than Oprah. (Also Aprah)
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 18:43 |
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penga86 posted:Oh no, i went downstairs and watched him do it. Typed in a 8 character password wrong three times in a row. The Service Desk said he calls in at least once every couple of days because he's locked himself out the old fashioned way.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 19:27 |
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Badfinger posted:I find 'freses' to be more damning than Oprah.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 20:05 |
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Yaos posted:The ticket you posted can't be real, he did not blame IT for changing all of his passwords every day. You're kidding right? IT is responsible for everything from changing passwords against peoples' will to impregnating users' cats. We're always out to 'get' them, and we all have secret stuff that works 10,000x better than the piece of poo poo we stick them with at their desk. And we all have direct network connections to 100Gbit pipes in our homes and wirelessly to our brain, paid for by the company. You'd be amazed at the amount of IT paranoia there is in the regular user ranks.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 20:09 |
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AlexDeGruven posted:
Fortunately, I have not been accused of this yet, as I do not know how I would reply.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 20:12 |
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Nuke posted:Fortunately, I have not been accused of this yet, as I do not know how I would reply. The appropriate answer is the evil laugh. Big hearty "MWAHAHAHA" and everything. Didn't they teach you this in school ?
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 20:16 |
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Nuke posted:Fortunately, I have not been accused of this yet, as I do not know how I would reply. Would you like to trade with me?
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 20:35 |
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AlexDeGruven posted:You're kidding right? IT is responsible for everything from changing passwords against peoples' will to impregnating users' cats. I used to get dirty looks at my work laptop because I could simply change my desktop wallpaper. I used to explain that a lot of our tools need admin access, but I don't think they believed me. This will get worse when we get new laptops and we are hoping to get Macbook Pros.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 20:48 |
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Most of our users are pretty chill, but some of them are crazy. One of my co-workers came back from a site yesterday and said that a user she was talking to told her "I didn't read that email you sent. It was too long. I don't read long emails. If you want me to read it you're gonna have to shorten it up a lot."  This... this is... these instructions are vital to doing your job right. Seriously? You're going to blatantly, arrogantly
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 20:58 |
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Most of our users are pretty chill, but some of them are crazy. It's supposedly a movement, especially among businesses, to shorten emails and free up time. People are dumb, but hopefully she's doing it for what is somewhat of a good reason. Though yeah, certain exceptions have to be made.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 21:25 |
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Most of our users are pretty chill, but some of them are crazy. Well, time to deliver all instructions in the form of a stream of consciousness of nothing but the names of buttons. I actually do this sometimes to some of our more advanced users in person just for kicks. Today I ended up saying, "Start, Printers and Faxes, Add Printer, Next, Next, Next, Find Now, Double-click the only result, No, Next, Finish" to three or four people who enjoy a challenge and seeing how far they got with their printer installation before needing help. If this is a manager or someone who actually has a say in policy this might be taken as sarcastic and would probably be a bad idea, but otherwise I think someone actually actively working to prevent you from helping them with their issue deserves a little sarcasm.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 23:06 |
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Nuke posted:Fortunately, I have not been accused of this yet, as I do not know how I would reply. If someone said this to me, I just might drag them back to the office and show them my Dell GX270 
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 23:26 |
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Midelne posted:Well, time to deliver all instructions in the form of a stream of consciousness of nothing but the names of buttons. This is how I give most of my instructions, though I tend to be in a position where I can watch, since I don't remember enough clicks.
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| # ? Apr 24, 2009 23:34 |
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nullandvoid posted:We house a system called OPERA. It's designed for hotels and hospitality enviornments. Sometimes, the help desk doesn't catch the name, and it turns to OPRAH. Holy poo poo I had to support this a few years back, talk about a total clusterfuck.
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| # ? Apr 25, 2009 03:59 |
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A pretty important client of my company is going through a fairly large migration on their side so they occasionally need help with custom exports from our system for a one time load into their new system to make things easier for them, whatever. Most of the requests have been pretty trivial, formatting changes really. This one came in out of the blue though. Severity: Critical Request:  We need a query for all our users system with their username and password. The password appears to be encrypted, please provide us the query to decrypt to show actual password with usernames to be used in export. Need this asapI feel sorry for our on-call guy who now has to explain the difference between hashing and encrypting and why this request is pretty much loving impossible. And this doesn't even begin to raise the question of privacy, security,etc.. there isn't a big enough some days.
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| # ? Apr 26, 2009 03:23 |
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A ticket put in by an agent at the offsite overflow helpdesk.quote:map won't collect
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| # ? Apr 26, 2009 03:28 |
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Since I also handle tickets(one of the many things I do) I got a few good ones. "I need 2 computers on my desk, when you stop by please bring one and a linker cable" Looking at the name of the person who sent this I already knew what she meant. What did she actually want? She just wanted to connect another spare computer to the network. Nothing about having them literally on her desk, or even 2 monitors, just...yeah...and yes, the "linker cable" she was referring to was an ethernet cable. We also use Websense at work to restrict access to websites and instant messenger apps. I ocassionally get requests to allow access to http://www.fuckingobviousmalwaresite.com to download "smileys for e-mails" or even to "allow MSN just for today." No joke. Speaking of spyware I get one ticket every week or so about it from our site offices. Our sites connect to our services using RDP, and our TS is locked down so users don't have a chance to infect it, but that doesn't stop them from infecting their local machine! "I am on the server and I am getting porn pop-ups! You better fix the server quickly this is disgusting!" Yes, I'm responsible for your browsing off our servers. Then when I can't even use GotoAssist to access their PC because it's so infected they get pissed when they find out I'll have to charge them $75/hour to stop by and fix it. They always concede since they know it's their fault and need to be able to work anyway. Edit: Also, how many of you have users forward you obvious spam/hoax e-mail and say things like "you better watch out for this!" or "Is this real? Am I infected?" and "please stop all spam." Yes sorry, our Ironports can't catch 100% of spam all the time, but it's drat close so stop bitching! Diocletian fucked around with this message at Apr 27, 2009 around 04:38 |
| # ? Apr 27, 2009 04:35 |
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Diocletian posted:Edit: Also, how many of you have users forward you obvious spam/hoax e-mail and say things like "you better watch out for this!" or "Is this real? Am I infected?" and "please stop all spam." Yes sorry, our Ironports can't catch 100% of spam all the time, but it's drat close so stop bitching! Our users usually send these "warnings" out to everyone, so I type up a nice reply about how this new virus-who-will-infect-your-computer-so-that-it-blows-up-for-real isn't registered with any of the credible antivirus vendors they always claim the warning is coming from in the first place, and then I send that to everyone too. After I started showing the senders how dumb they are to the whole organisation the amount of "warnings" have dropped to maybe one per year.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2009 06:39 |
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Several tickets came in from the same user, minutes apart . . .quote:TEAM MANAGER JULLIETTE quote:WHEN WE WHERE MOVED LOGGED ON THEN THE EMAIL REQUESTED A CONFIGOGARTION PLEASE ADV AS THIS WAS OFF SINCE SATURADY Some from earlier this morning. . . quote:WE MOVED DESKS AND WHEN I TRYD TO LOG IN MY EAMIL REQUESTED A NEW CONFIGORATION PLEASE ASSIST me quote:this reuqset i need n=to sent out stats fro three teams and all these lnks are in the email which is in ned of confogiration this happens all the time quote:i am not on the phones so i dont have a fixed desk everytime i log on email it always aks for reconfigarion i need to snet out stats and aht fro leo as i was tasked with time keeping. the three teams are asking me all the time where there stats is please assist and adv me if im doing it wrong or is this normal as this happens top me almost every weeek after a weekend I watched his terminal remotely and he was using email fine. I'm guessing Outlook wants to set itself up again from scratch when he logs in or something, but him not responding to phonecalls is not a good thing, nor is the fact when we email him he deletes the email right away, yet logs another zany ticket afterwards! All this plus his appaling spelling, suggests he is either a moron, playing trcks on us, or severely, immensely drunk. Maybe all three.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2009 11:54 |
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Crowley posted:Our users usually send these "warnings" out to everyone, so I type up a nice reply about how this new virus-who-will-infect-your-computer-so-that-it-blows-up-for-real isn't registered with any of the credible antivirus vendors they always claim the warning is coming from in the first place, and then I send that to everyone too. After I started showing the senders how dumb they are to the whole organisation the amount of "warnings" have dropped to maybe one per year. I like the virus warning forwards that have the chutzpah to link to a Snopes page that lists them as a hoax. People are like, "Oh, it links to Snopes, it must be real!" and forward them to me. Then I have a good laugh because it's always the one that talks about how the ubervirus will FORMAT THE ZERO SECTOR OF YOUR HARD DRIVE.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2009 13:38 |
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Midelne posted:I like the virus warning forwards that have the chutzpah to link to a Snopes page that lists them as a hoax. People are like, "Oh, it links to Snopes, it must be real!" and forward them to me. Then I have a good laugh because it's always the one that talks about how the ubervirus will FORMAT THE ZERO SECTOR OF YOUR HARD DRIVE. My favorites are the one that basically threaten everything but having your computer grow arms and beat you up for your lunch money.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2009 13:47 |
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Rock Steady posted:
What's even better than mass company emails is when people start doing reply-all with stuff like "please remove me from this email chain" followed by 300 more "me too"s and then a bunch more people replying with "stop using reply-all". I think a couple people got written up for it at least, but the sheer level of stupidity everyone needs to keep replying is mindblowing.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2009 13:51 |
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I really hate mass company emails. We usually get one a week about stupid stuff like this but this one is probably the worst I've seen (so far).
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| # ? May 18, 2013 20:04 |
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A fun one this morning: SUBJECT: Therayp Compture MESSAGE: *screenshot* I was a little scared to look at the screenshot after reading the subject. Fortunately it was just a simple picture of a spreadsheet.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2009 14:21 |
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