Earlier quoted context omitted.
yeah, lets equate someone getting a limb ripped off with allowing developers to have local admin rights. That's everything that's wrong with the security mindset.
Developers dont need local admin rights to develop software, plenty of devs at regulated industries work with user rights. And statistics of developers falling victim of phish attack, credentials stealing that leads to major breach - there are plenty. The most recent Uber hack or Okta hack - were all tied to developer clicking on stupid stuff, opening executables from Internet and getting his a$$ owned. You just gott…
And now I'm going to quote myself from earlier to make it clear you're displaying exactly the silliness I was speaking to, with added emphasis.
"If human beings took the same approach to safety that Security people do to security, they'd insist the wheels on your vehicle should only be able to turn straight and right. That the vehicle should _actively_ prevent you from turning your wheels left because left turns are more dangerous than right turns and THEY CAN SHOW THAT YOU CAN ALWAYS GET TO YOUR DESTINATION WITH JUST RIGHT TURNS."
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You see, you can still get to your destination with no left turns, it's just really damned inconvenient and has costs in terms of happiness and time.
It's a classic case of security people making decisions they themselves don't have to pay the cost of.
And don't get me wrong, you'll often hear security people _CLAIM_ they do, in fact, adhere to all of the security practices they insist on. And they may even do so.
But ...
THESE SECURITY PEOPLE ARE NOT DEVELOPERS.
There's no critical thinking in these decisions. A phone agent working in a very specific application all day doesn't need access to the PC the way a developer does.
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> And statistics of developers falling victim of phish attack, credentials stealing that leads to major breach - there are plenty. The most recent Uber hack or Okta hack - were all tied to developer clicking on stupid stuff, opening executables from Internet and getting his a$$ owned.
uber hackers got through using slack, okta was a technician RDPing in.
Neither were developers, and unless you're prepared to claim slack wasn't sanctioned by the company, it's all just a long worded admission that removing local admin rights didn't actually help.
Then there's the question of, if someone steals a developers credentials, what do they have access to?
THAT is where the rubber hits the road. I've literally seen the following:
- Disallow developers from running powershell, but they can log directly into DB's with PII and PHI data ("they had a legitimate business need").
- Force developers making 6-figure salaries to "request access" for admin or the installation of software, said requests being granted by support teams of people making a little over minimum wage.
There's a reason why so many people call it security theatre.
> You just gotta accept the fact that developers are not security specialists, most of them cant even create a software without introducing plenty of bugs and vulnerabilities. They mostly google stuff and copypaste from stackoverflow, install shady barely working packages and copypaste directly into production whatever code snippet they found on the first page of Google results. Thats why they need extra control from security specialists
The reason your company is full of such developers is because you took away local admin rights and the ones with options left. You don't even have any left who could mentor the ones that need mentoring, they left too.
Put yourselves in the shoes of that developer who can access PHI at will, but cannot update their Visual Studio in the name of security because it requires local admin rights to do so.