• hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Dude should have just added comments indicating that the code was part of some security test but was unfinished and extremely dangerous.

    Change a few file names, add a comment how it will never run under normal circumstances, and you’ve got plausible deniability.

  • Cinder Bloc @lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Every person that has worked in a sysadmin type role, has joked about doing something like this. Very few actually carry through with it. So, in a way, I kinda like this guy for actually doing it, even if he didn’t cover his tracks very well.

    • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      IT work is feast or famine.

      “IT people, your not doing anything, what the hell do we pay you for?”

      “IT people, everything is on fire, what the hell do we pay you for?”

  • Toes♀@ani.social
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    8 days ago

    Reminds me of the timebombs in windows 2000. I guess he’s forced to start fresh.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I’m disappointed they found so much in his search history. Do these people not have phones? In this day and age with everyone carrying a smartphone, there’s no excuse for using work computers for personal activities

    • kautau@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Did it say they went through his work search history? Everything you search on Google with your IP or through your account is recorded, in case law enforcement knocks. Don’t think using a phone protects you. Use a trusted VPN in a separate browser if you want to search for things and not have them show up in court.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I think that what happens on a work computer, a work network, belongs to the company and they are free to check it at will.

        However my phone, and what happens on the network it’s attached to are between me and my provider, and usually needs a warrant for someone to look through.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      In this day and age with everyone carrying a smartphone, there’s no excuse for using work computers for personal activities

      There are plenty of reasons, mostly amounting to “Nobody tends to give a fuck” and “I’m not running out to buy a second high end laptop just to casually browse the web from my couch on the weekend”.

      What you’ve got is a very poorly enforced, very draconianly executed set of deliberately vague and inarticulate rules that vary from company to company. And none of that really has anything to do with the “kill switch” thing. In the same way you might say “Well but obviously nobody should smoke weed in a state that criminalizes it! That’s just stupid!” when you’ve got the police tearing apart a particular person’s house for a completely unrelated issue, based on an officer’s exclamation of “I smell weed!” at the front porch.

      Just accept you live in a police state and stop buying into excuses made to surveil and punish.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I’m not running out to buy a second high end laptop just to casually browse the web

        Even the cheapest laptop or tablet will cover that need

        But when you’re at work, planning criminal activities, the least you can do is save your searches for “how to be a criminal mastermind” on your personal phone

  • Vanth@reddthat.com
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    8 days ago

    Initially makes me wonder how the employer could be so dumb as to give one employee so much access. But then I remember a former employer of mine did the same and worse.

    Colleague was known for writing his comments in such a way that only he could read them, including mixing in German (US based company doing all business in English). He was also the admin of our CAD system and would use it as leverage to get his way on things, including not giving even default user access to engineers he didn’t like. We migrated systems and everyone was thinking, “this is it, the chance to root this guy out of the admin position” and… they gave him admin access again. Not even our IT department had the access he had. I left before the guy retired / was fired, this post is making me wonder if he left peacefully or left bricking the CAD system out.

    • jaschen@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      My previous work didn’t revoked my access to their CMS. I was so upset when they laid me off after telling them my wife is pregnant.

      But I ain’t that stupid.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Initially makes me wonder how the employer could be so dumb as to give one employee so much access.

      The amount of access he had doesn’t surprise me. He’d been there for 11 years already likely working on many things as he interacted with systems in the course of his legitimate work. While its possible to set up access and permissions in an organization utilizing the “least privilege principle”, its expensive, difficult to maintain, and adds lots of slowdowns in velocity to business operations. Its worth it to prevent this exact case from the article, but lots of companies don’t have the patience or can’t afford it.

    • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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      7 days ago

      Initially makes me wonder how the employer could be so dumb as to give one employee so much access.

      Right now, just based purely on the access I need to do my day-to-day job involves me having access where I can pretty much nuke everything from orbit, with an ssh loop.

      At some point, you need to trust your employees, in order to get work done. Sure, you can lock it all down tightly, but then you just made work take longer. It’s a trade off.

  • DrunkenPirate@feddit.org
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    8 days ago

    And now imagine doing this or sort of this destruction in a smaller company that has one to three mediocre admins at highest. One can kill this company and they would never get it why the computers got weird.

  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Weird that these protections exist for corporations that aren’t actually people but no protections exist for the person who was fired.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I don’t see how pretending that’s weird is gonna help anyone.

      We all know we don’t live in a just world.

      We need to try and make it one, instead of pretending we’re living in one which happens to have horrid injustice happening all the time.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Hmm, I wonder if it is actually. I think it’s just a euphemism for it’s wrong how" or “it’s weird how we as people keep allowing this to happen in a democratic world”, but I honestly don’t think it’s sarcasm.

          I get the point and I write that way all the time too, but I thought to see what happens if I just stop participating in the pretense of it being weird.

          But yes maybe it is just sarcasm, but like the same sort of rhetoric is often used to talk about problems which are sort of too complex and large to easily assert something which should or even could be done.

          But yes. Sarcasm.

    • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 days ago

      yeah it’s pretty crazy. almost like government is for some things and not others, and knows it, like maybe laws were always just an excuse and tool for victim blaming. or something.

      • Etterra@discuss.online
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        7 days ago

        The amazing thing is that the government doesn’t get nearly as much tax income as you’d expect from these hugs companies. It’s almost as if the politicians have some other, secret motivating factor. Oh well, I guess we’ll never know.

        • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 days ago

          wait, are you saying that there’s this class that are the beneficiaries of governments and laws, and it’s the same as the class that doesn’t suffer any limitations when they do stuff that the governments and laws don’t like?

          and that we’re in this other class, that the laws and stuff exist to punish, but has to fund them and pay for them, or we get punished for that too?

          that’s fucking crazy.

    • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      Exactly my thought. A corporation destroys people’s lives by firing them? Nothing. Someone actually pushes back? Suddenly the government gets involved.

      • soupy_kid@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        We never left serfdom.

        Everyone you have ever met is a servant of the ruling class.

        You have never met a ruler and probably never will.

  • cookedslug@lemm.ee
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    8 days ago

    guy really tagged his name on the kill function, which was running on his own system. smh my head