Passwords and Power Drills
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Passwords and Power Drills
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Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#2The power drill mention in the headline is a bit click-baity because in the end while a power drill was used it was unnecessary and was not the solution to the problem. Had they known how to properly use the hardware security devices they had the power drill wouldn't have been deployed at all.
Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#3> "At this point, the engineers in Australia decided that a brute-force approach to their safe problem was warranted and applied a power drill to the task. An hour later, the safe was open—but even the newly retrieved cards triggered the same error message."
What happened here (from what I recall) was far funnier than this does it credit.
The SREs first attempted to use a mallet (hammer) on the safe (which they had to first buy from the local hardware store - don't worry it got expensed later), then after multiple rounds of "persuasion" they eventually called in a professional (aka. a locksmith) who used a drill+crowbar to finally liberate the keycard.
The postmortem had fun step by step photos of the safe in various stages of disassembly.
Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#4The power drill mention in the headline is a bit click-baity because in the end while a power drill was used it was unnecessary and was not the solution to the problem. Had they known how to properly use the hardware security devices they had the power drill wouldn't have been deployed at all.
Well, it would have been necessary if they hadn't managed to find the employee in California who had the password for the California safe memorized.
Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#5What is this, sitcom slapstick? The slapstick of storing the security combination to the safe on the system that is locked by the card which inside the safe; and the slapstick of "You're inserting it wrong"...
Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#6The power drill mention in the headline is a bit click-baity because in the end while a power drill was used it was unnecessary and was not the solution to the problem. Had they known how to properly use the hardware security devices they had the power drill wouldn't have been deployed at all.
Well, it would have been necessary if they hadn't managed to find the employee in California who had the password for the California safe memorized.
There are lots of alternative ways this could have played out. Yes.
Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#7The power drill mention in the headline is a bit click-baity because in the end while a power drill was used it was unnecessary and was not the solution to the problem. Had they known how to properly use the hardware security devices they had the power drill wouldn't have been deployed at all.
But the additional cards may very well have been necessary to understand “there is something wrong with our usage of the cards, this error is not a one-off failure due to corrupted data or broken hardware or other problem local to the California card(s)”. Having multiple independent reproductions of an issue helps you narrow down what the commonalities are!
Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#8> It took an additional hour for the team to realize that the green light on the smart card reader did not, in fact, indicate that the card had been inserted correctly.
I'm not sure which is worse: bad UI/UX use of lights, or inadequately trained engineers who misunderstood the lights.
Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#9The power drill mention in the headline is a bit click-baity because in the end while a power drill was used it was unnecessary and was not the solution to the problem. Had they known how to properly use the hardware security devices they had the power drill wouldn't have been deployed at all.
Sorry, but someone happening to have memory of the combination can also not be considered an adequate solution.
Re: Passwords and Power Drills
#10The power drill mention in the headline is a bit click-baity because in the end while a power drill was used it was unnecessary and was not the solution to the problem. Had they known how to properly use the hardware security devices they had the power drill wouldn't have been deployed at all.
Sorry, but someone happening to have memory of the combination can also not be considered an adequate solution.
He clearly had the combination written down