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Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

arstechnica.com

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Re: Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

#201

Post by dolebirchwood »

zuzululu wrote: post #164

I'm just amused how these people were even hired to begin with ? They don't seem to be Americans? How were they even allowed to work on sensitive systems? Why was this even allowed? So many questions. At 4:58 pm, he wiped out a Department of Homeland Security database using the command “DROP DATABASE dhsproddb.” At 4:59 pm, he asked an AI tool, “How do i clear system logs from SQL servers after deleting databases?” H…

They were born in Maryland, and apparently quite skilled (or at least skilled at cheating their way through their studies, if not genuinely technically skilled).

https://www.somdnews.com/archive/news/19-year-old-twins-high...

Re: Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

#202

Post by lazyasciiart »

joe_mamba wrote: post #185
ponector wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't trust your people so much, why to hire them in a first place? Looking at it from Europe - it is such a weird inhumane practice. Someone decided your position is redundant. Okay, shit happens, economic downturn, etc. Then you have extra 3-6 months of work to pass your knowledge, train replacement and document everything.

>Looking at it from Europe - it is such a weird inhumane practice. Pretty standard practice in many technology(not just IT) and finance companies in Europe as well. >If you don't trust your people so much, why to hire them in a first place? It's not about trust, it's about risk, and most companies operate on liability and risk mitigation. If society ran on trust alone, we wouldn't need contracts, door locks, password…

All the couples I know who are divorced did continue living together after one of them said it was over, I think the longest time actually was about 6 months.

Re: Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

#203

Post by joe_mamba »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #202
joe_mamba wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Looking at it from Europe - it is such a weird inhumane practice. Pretty standard practice in many technology(not just IT) and finance companies in Europe as well. >If you don't trust your people so much, why to hire them in a first place? It's not about trust, it's about risk, and most companies operate on liability and risk mitigation. If society ran on trust alone, we wouldn't need contracts, door locks, password…

All the couples I know who are divorced did continue living together after one of them said it was over, I think the longest time actually was about 6 months.

Yeah but did they still keep banging and cuddling like before the divorce announcement? They probably weren't doing much of that anyway if they got divorced but you get my point.

Re: Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

#204

Post by __turbobrew__ »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #69
giantg2 wrote: post #55

How did they get access to 5k passwords? Are they being sent/stored in cleartext? This is the most baffling part of the article for me. The second part I'm unclear about is how you could pass SOC2 when you aren't terminating account access simultaneously with the employment termination.

And how exactly do you want to store passwords if not in plain text (and then encrypted of course)? 5k is a lot, the authorization process is broken, but this is not related to how the passwords are stored. The only solution is correct access segregation and a bastion

You speak very authoritatively on something you don’t know.

Hashing passwords has been a thing for at least 50 years now. V3 unix had /etc/passwd which hashed all user passwords. Notably, these hashed passwords in early unix have been cracked: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/forum...

I guess you got your answer.

Re: Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

#206

Post by jiggawatts »

bozhark wrote: post #181
jiggawatts wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day-to-day operation of large government bureaucracies is surprisingly immune to elections. The same people stay in the same job for decades, the "churn" only happens at the highest levels, and even those positions tend to outlast changes in the current political party in charge.

Did you not see what happened in the last year to federal workers?

This problem has been "cooking" for 12.5 years, not 1.

Re: Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

#207

Post by brightball »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #199
yaur wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terminating access and rotating passwords (if needed) while the person is in the meeting but has not yet found out they are being let go has been SOP for at least the last 20 years

Amateurs. My employer does mass layoffs by terminating access to everything except their email account at 3am, and then sending an email to the victim saying “you were let go at 3am”. Managers get to figure out who’s left on their team by pinging everyone when they learn about it at work.

Oracle?

Re: Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

#208

Post by harrisi »

bozhark wrote: post #181
jiggawatts wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day-to-day operation of large government bureaucracies is surprisingly immune to elections. The same people stay in the same job for decades, the "churn" only happens at the highest levels, and even those positions tend to outlast changes in the current political party in charge.

Did you not see what happened in the last year to federal workers?

Unfortunately this is a good example of kicking the can. Not to the next administration but to after the next elections. Some aspects are felt already but not all.

It's a good time to be kind to your neighbors. No matter their background, they're almost certainly not the ones to be upset at.

Re: Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

#210

Post by harrisi »

jiggawatts wrote: post #206
bozhark wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not see what happened in the last year to federal workers?

This problem has been "cooking" for 12.5 years, not 1.

You're off by an order of magnitude, sadly.
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