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Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

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Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#221

Post by kenrose »

daneel_w wrote: post #212
lucraft wrote: post #186

There's a load of nonsense in the comments here today. * Drata is a vendor that helps a company navigate your SOC2 compliance process, by organizing all the controls and helping you gather evidence that you have done so. For instance, they'll connect with Github and make sure everyone with access to your repos is a company employee. If you don't use Drata you have to gather this evidence yourself, repeatedly over mon…

> "The poster says "Their business model (in my case) seems to be to take money from companies to spy on their employees/contractors, and then they sell the employees/contractors private information to "targeted advertising". > Do you have any evidence for this?? I've just been involved in selecting Drata as a vendor for SOC2 compliance planning for our company. If this is true it's a huge deal and totally against my…

That’s not how burden of proof works.

OP made a claim that Drata collects private employee info and resells it. That’s a large claim.

It’s on OP to justify that position, not on the parent to rebut the opposite.

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#222

Post by woodson »

yholio wrote: post #179
qwerty456127 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it And they will install a trojan which would eavesdrop your talks, scan your home network and analyze its traffic.

That's why you tape off cameras and stick a needle in condenser mics on any new laptop.

Don't they use MEMS microphones nowadays? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems) Either way, solid advice!

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#223

Post by formerly_proven »

allarm wrote: post #183
88 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VLAN is the obvious and most cost-effective mitigation

Not really. VLAN provides segmentation, but it does not provide any mechanisms to limit access to other vlans in your network - which are most likely routed by your router. You will need to add some L3 filtering (acls/iptables/whatever) to isolate segments.

That's only true if use of VLAN tags is controlled by hosts; if you use a smart switch to assign VLANs to ports it's pretty much as-if you have multiple, physically separated networks.

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#224

Post by anddt »

I worked as a contractor for a large media company in Europe (fully remote, from Italy). We had company issued laptops prepackaged with corporate tooling (VPNs, accounts, etc.) and that came with a fair bit of corporate-spyware included from _at least_ couple different vendors.

At one point, I was writing a small demo in golang for one of our projects and I've been contacted by a security engineer telling me that I've been hitting C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp\go-build2923888066\b001\exe\main.exe too frequently and that called a `cryptsp.dll` that according to him was highly correlated with ransomware attacks. I was adviced to stop working on that until my manager confirmed this was legitimate activity. I must admit, I've been quite freaked by the fact that they were listening for the single executables launched on my machine.

Needless to say, this dragged on for a week due to complex internal politics. I thoroughly enjoyed a week of paid time off.

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#225

Post by blitzar »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #49
gnfargbl wrote: post #45

If you are a freelancer then your contract should allow you to do work for others. In which case, your response to this client has to be "Sorry, but my business laptop potentially has data from other clients on it. I can't let you install this monitoring agent without violating my contractual confidentially agreement with those other clients. I always maintain client confidentiality and will do the same for you. If y…

> If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it And they will install a trojan which would eavesdrop your talks, scan your home network and analyze its traffic.

> And they will install a trojan

They WILL

> which would eavesdrop your talks

That absolutely WILL - use the microphone and listen to everything being said (why not the camera too and watch everthing?)

> scan your home network and analyze its traffic.

That absolutely WILL - do all this stuff

I mean if this is definately going to happen, then the company can go ahead and cut an 8 figure cheque straight away. Which company and where do I sign up?

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#226

Post by DnDGrognard »

gorgoiler wrote: post #158
DnDGrognard wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most peoples home network wont be able to support VLAN's and would your employer be more worried about your ISP provided router - hmm must really replace that huawei router on my network.

Here's a five port 802.1Q VLAN switch for $39.99 + tax: https://www.newegg.com/netgear-gs105e/p/N82E16833122598

Interesting though my network is powerline so id need one in front of every POE switch (and that's assuming the powerline devices would pass the Vlan tags)

And id need a VDSL Router that supported Vlans as well so that's 4 switch's plus a router.

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#227

Post by Juliate »

biztos wrote: post #167
gnfargbl wrote: post #45

If you are a freelancer then your contract should allow you to do work for others. In which case, your response to this client has to be "Sorry, but my business laptop potentially has data from other clients on it. I can't let you install this monitoring agent without violating my contractual confidentially agreement with those other clients. I always maintain client confidentiality and will do the same for you. If y…

I think this is the correct advice, but keep in mind that procuring the laptop might be a difficult thing for them to do bureaucratically. On the other hand, you renting a laptop and charging them for it, would be pretty simple, presumably your contract covers expenses and all you'd need is an OK from the manager. I worked for a big company that had various spyware thingies installed on all the company laptops, but t…

> procuring the laptop might be a difficult thing for them to do bureaucratically

Not if they are at the point where they need SOC2 cert, and where they install agents on their employees computers (and want to extend that to their suppliers).

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#228

Post by Illniyar »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #49
gnfargbl wrote: post #45

If you are a freelancer then your contract should allow you to do work for others. In which case, your response to this client has to be "Sorry, but my business laptop potentially has data from other clients on it. I can't let you install this monitoring agent without violating my contractual confidentially agreement with those other clients. I always maintain client confidentiality and will do the same for you. If y…

> If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it And they will install a trojan which would eavesdrop your talks, scan your home network and analyze its traffic.

That's a stretch.

Most companies don't want to spy on their employees' free time. They want to 1- make sure they are compliant with the law and their confidential stuff is secure and 2 - make sure that you are actually working for them when you say you are.

Installing something to listen to non-work related stuff serves neither of these goals, and would open them up to lawsuits and PR nightmares.

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#229

Post by Lendal »

lallysingh wrote: post #208
gnfargbl wrote: post #45

If you are a freelancer then your contract should allow you to do work for others. In which case, your response to this client has to be "Sorry, but my business laptop potentially has data from other clients on it. I can't let you install this monitoring agent without violating my contractual confidentially agreement with those other clients. I always maintain client confidentiality and will do the same for you. If y…

Can you run all that in a cloud vm, and RDP into it for work?

This is the better option. I used to have a separate laptop just for one client and it was a pain in the ass. What happens when it gets damaged? They could charge you for the repair. Not worth the hassle of keeping track of it, lugging it around everywhere, keeping it charged & updated. Definitely a pain in the ass. Just do a cloud VM that the client owns with VPN access to the client's network. These are common now with Amazon Workspaces.

Re: Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

#230

Post by 300bps »

byron4242 wrote: post #163
SkyMarshal wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it. I wouldn't offer this. You're still going to need to login to Github/email/wherever with your personal password, manage private keys, and stuff like that. Just say no.

It's a widespread practice that companies provide laptops to contractors to compartmentalize the way they interact with the company's IT. But I'm really quite opposed to it. At one point I had 3 sets of machines: Two different 14" laptops from two different clients and my own machines. At some point you simply run out of space on your desk and end up constantly either working on screens that are too small (14" really…

I have a dedicated laptop for a client that is in a room of my basement. I remote into it from my personal machine whenever I do work for them. Works very well!
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