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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I’ve worked with Windows environments from 2003 until still today migrating to azure. The biggest skills gap with technicians and engineers administrating Windows is actually networking. This single point connects every single service server and user and yet dns, dhcp, routing and it’s protocols, link layer technologies like vlans interface configurations aggregation and more is so poorly understood that engineers and technicians often significantly mistake problems. Almost all issues happen around network layers 2-4 or layer 8 (the end user).

    It doesn’t need to be first but no matter what os or component, networking is core and the single biggest return on investment for systems admin types.

    Sure other basic skills are required but just being able to test TCP by telnet or understand each hop, and is the server listening? What process ID is listening? Did someone configure rdp off 3389 and that’s why it doesn’t work? Was the host file edited and that’s why it’s resolving some old ip for this hostname? Why is it going out the wan interface of the router when it should be going over an ipsec tunnel?

    All this and more has nothing to do with Windows, and yet, anything that isn’t just user training or show and tell about how to do something, there’s a good chance it requires you to follow the networking layers to make sure behaviour is expected.





  • What would you suggest they sell on their Android store that users would be so encouraged to install a new store and then what they want?

    Steam already has a store on Android, you just can’t play games there because most games on steam either already exist on the native google play store, or aren’t compatible with mobile architectures like Arm64. Most mobiles unlike a arm laptop, have no x86/amd64 emulator which is what those games are compiled as by their developers.

    So what’s left?


  • Enterprise applications are often developed by the most “quick, ship this feature” form of developers on the world. Unless the client is paying for the development a quick look at the sql table shows often unsalted passwords in a table.

    I’ve seen this in construction, medical, recruitment and other industries.

    Until cyber security requires code auditing for handling and maintaining PII as law, mostly its a “you’re fine until you get breached” approach. Even things like ACSC Australia cyber security centre, has limited guidelines. Practically worthless. At most they suggest having MFA for Web facing services. Most cyber security insurers have something but it’s also practically self reported. No proof. So if someone gets breached because someone left everyone’s passwords in a table, largely unguarded, the world becomes a worse place and the list of user names and passwords on haveibeenpwned grows.

    Edit: if a client pays and therefore has control to determine things like code auditing and security auditing etc as well as saml etc etc, then it’s something else. But say in the construction industry I’ve seen the same garbage tier software used at 12 different companies, warts and all. The developer is semi local to Australia ignoring the offshore developers…


  • I think you probably don’t realise you hate standards and certifications. No IT person wants yet another system generating more calls and complexity. but here is iso, or a cyber insurance policy, or NIST, or acsc asking minimums with checklists and a cyber review answering them with controls.

    Crazy that there’s so little understanding about why it’s there, that you just think it’s the “IT guy” wanting those.


  • Hmm, so, policy in our office is a clean desk. Before you jump to conclusions, it’s because our secured area and office occasionally has people come through that should absolutely not see what information we have on our desks. This requirement is a compliance issue for our continued contracts and certifications.

    Our work from home policy hasn’t addressed this issue, but it sounds like it’s a clear gap. Your neighbour coming around for a cup of tea absolutely should not be able to see any work related information.

    My assumption is that someone has considered this kind of aspect and had a check to confirm that they’ve done diligence by asking you to reveal your working space. A space the companies sensitive information would be visible. Actually you too should maybe not be looking at your wife’s screen nor materials on her work desk. Depending on the situation.

    Either way, policy comes first so perhaps her employment agreement or employee handbook would reveal more.




  • A software shouldn’t use passwords for tls, just like before you use submit your bank password your network connection to the site has been validated and encrypted by the public key your client is using to talk to the bank server, and the bank private key to decrypt it.

    The rest of the hygiene is still up for grabs for sure, IT security is built on layers. Even if one is broken it shouldn’t lead to a failure overall. If it does, go add more layers.

    To answer about something like a WiFi pineapple: those man in the middle attacks are thwarted by TLS. The moment an invalid certificate is offered, since the man in the middle should and can not know the private key (something that isn’t used as whimsically as a password, and is validated by a trusted root authority).

    If an attacker has a private key, your systems already have failed. You should immediately revoke it. You publish your revokation. Invalidating it. But even that would be egregious. You’ve already let someone into the vault, they already have the crown jewels. The POS system doesn’t even need to be accessed.

    So no matter what, the WiFi is irrelevant in a setup.

    Being suspicious because of it though, I could understand. It’s not a smoking gun, but you’d maybe look deeper out if suspicion.

    Note I’m not security operations, I’m solutions and systems administrations. A Sec Ops would probably agree more with you than I do.

    I consider things from a Swiss cheese model, and rely on 4+ layers of protection against most understood threat vendors. A failure of any one is minor non-compliance in my mind, a deep priority 3. Into the queue, but there’s no rush. And given a public WiFi is basically the same as a compromised WiFi, or a 5g carrier network, a POS solution should be built with strengths to handle that by default. And then security layered on top (mfa, conditional access policies, PKI/TLS, Mdm, endpoint health policies, TPM and validation++++)