[Hank]

Tea Monster, on 17 September 2012 - 02:22 AM, said:

I shouldn't complain though. They did let me install Blender and let me do Duke models between calls (and yes, I did ask).

Very good. We have a simple policy, the project has to be finished on or before a dead line, and if you are online for you own, try to keep the viruses out.
The IT did not like it, people started chatting, playing games and what not. He was so worried about security, and he wanted to screen all the extra activity, I told him to simply get the best system, and stay out of their personal communications. - The projects were/are completed on time with less headaches. And because the behaviour is open, any problems like a virus or trojan is quickly addressed and so on. win win for everyone, even the IT is smiling.

[Kathy]

But who would be dealing with the possible OS problems, users on their own or an IT? Because if the user have all the privileges then all the shit he's done should be his to sort it out.

[Tea Monster]

Exactly. As an example, one of the guys had installed a backdoor on his machine so he could access it from home. He did something stupid and got his ass fired. So after he's marched out the door, he goes home, fires up his comp, gets into his (ex) computer at work and then \\'s his way into his supervisor and line manager's comp and erases the contents of the documents folder. There is no real reason why he couldn't have wiped every machine in the place.

In any kind of largeish organisation, you do NOT want to be giving out admin roles to everyone. As in any situation, you will cruise along fine until one day when all the wheels will fall off at once.

[Kathy]

Tea Monster, on 18 September 2012 - 02:11 AM, said:

As an example, one of the guys had installed a backdoor on his machine so he could access it from home. He did something stupid and got his ass fired. So after he's marched out the door, he goes home, fires up his comp, gets into his (ex) computer at work and then \\'s his way into his supervisor and line manager's comp and erases the contents of the documents folder. There is no real reason why he couldn't have wiped every machine in the place.

So... even after that accident proper security wasn't implemented? Wow!

[Hank]

well, that is unusual. I will test for hackers this afternoon, but on our system are only four admins, one for VMware, our designated IT guy my partner and I. All other users are limited per project, with full internet access.
What I don't understand, most software, even opensource OpenNMS, asks you to assign roles for new users. I am not an IT guy, but would that not be the first step for security?

[Kathy]

Sure, assigning roles is part of maintaining security. Not sure about the first step, though. It depends on the system.

[Radar]

What is hacking, though? At school, I can play Duke on the computers by modifying the source port destinations in yang (Yang puts them in with a "//student/[user]" at the beginning, so I change it to "h:/" to represent the My Documents of the current user). Then, I bypass having to port forward anything by having another student manually join my room with Yang (by typing my internal IP address). Then I make sure everyone playing has different TCP numbers (I actually keep a list of every person and their respective TCP number so it never gets confusing) so we don't get resending errors when launching the game.

The thing is, finding the internal IP address is trivial, and all the places where a normal Windows XP computer will show you its internal IP is blocked at school. I resorted to using ipconfig to find the IP address in an interesting way. Unfortunately, cmd itself is blocked at school, but a friend of mine showed me an interesting trick where going into system32 (yes, I have perfect access to that folder in school, somehow) and finding COMMAND.COM and attaching a shortcut to it will enable cmd that way. By using that, I can find the internal IP without a problem.

I've also been able to host rooms for the whole public to see by changing the TCP number in Yang to 80 or 443. Unfortunately, the game doesn't launch, claiming that something else is using the same port number (obviously), but it works for chatting. Another downside is that I believe anyone outside of the school LAN will see my room with infinite ping.

Is this hacking? Just simply launching XDuke on school computers gets kids by me riled up thinking that I'm hacking something (XDuke starts up with cmd-like text, so I understand the reactions) . I don't even have to load a cmd window for kids to ask what the heck I'm doing. Don't even get me started on the reactions of people when they see me click one button to send black windows on 6 other screen starting up, launching a nice Dukematch session. I don't consider this hacking, more like manipulating the security vulnerabilities of the school network. Technically, all I'm doing is what the school allows me to do.

[Kathy]

Radar, on 18 September 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

system32 (yes, I have perfect access to that folder in school, somehow)

What's so surprising about it? Yes, there are option to block some disks via explorer and other gui, but in terms of NTFS ACLs(which means real blocking, not some cheap gui trick) you probably shouldn't do that because user should have access(read only) to those files/directories. You can block some programs via SRP, though(cmd.exe and command.com should have probably sufficed).

Quote

I don't consider this hacking, more like manipulating the security vulnerabilities of the school network. Technically, all I'm doing is what the school allows me to do.

Well, hacking is manipulating security vulnerabilities. )

[Spirrwell]

Well, I know about the trouble I could possibly get into, I've already gotten into trouble before because of asking a question on yahoo answers at one point which stupidly shows my name and whatnot about accessing one of their computers remotely, and I never even got to the point of actually doing it nine months after posting the question when I got in trouble.

Anyway, I managed to dump the system32 folder by installing Ubuntu on an external hard drive at home and turning on a computer at school with the drive plugged in. So I'm going to work on that now that I have it. What I don't understand is I was able to do that yet if I make a bootable USB drive from a LiveCD or something, it won't work.

[Kathy]

Spirrwell, on 19 September 2012 - 10:18 AM, said:

Anyway, I managed to dump the system32 folder by installing Ubuntu on an external hard drive at home and turning on a computer at school with the drive plugged in. So I'm going to work on that now that I have it. What I don't understand is I was able to do that yet if I make a bootable USB drive from a LiveCD or something, it won't work.

Be more specific. Why it wouldn't work if you boot from a usb drive?

[Spirrwell]

Burnett, on 19 September 2012 - 10:52 AM, said:

Be more specific. Why it wouldn't work if you boot from a usb drive?

Well I had tried things like using unetbootin to create a bootable USB to boot from as if it were LiveCD such as Offline NT, or an Ubuntu installation LiveCD. I don't understand why using an external hard drive with an operating system on it would work over that, but if it works, it works. Anyway, I'm running a brute force on the NTLM hash now, and if I get lucky I will have it within hours with my video card. If that doesn't work, I'm going to have to find a program that will work over a network so I could run a bunch of graphics cards to crack the one password.