This is a list of information and resources for SF Bay Area fires. It's on a site I have been developing on and off for some time. I would appreciate any feedback you have.
Proper exit procedure should have disabled all access from this ex-admin..., unless s/he had some sort of cron job or launched some process that would execute commands at certain time? I am very curious to know how it was done.
IT admin people have the keys to the building and pretty much all data at the end of the day. Trust is everything and reputation is extremely important. This will not go well for the ex-admin one way or another either by lawsuit or blacklisting.
Well, assuming he doesn't change his name and fake his employment history. Or just deny it. Or threaten to sue for libel if anyone claims it was him that did it. If it was me I'd claim they screwed up (restored a backup onto the backups, something like that, happens all the time) then blamed me. Let's be honest, they're more screwed than he is.
At the core, IT people are usually seen as cost centers and not revenue generators. Not that I disagree with the business owners a lot of the time because IT is usually not the thing that makes a lot of companies money.
Often people about to get fired knew long before that axe was coming. Making sure everything is properly backed up and secure is a better option and what you should be doing anyway.
So true. A former employer continues to share google docs with me -- not just updates to docs I had been using but new docs as well. I don't read them because they're no longer any of my business, but I haven't been able to stop it from happening.
> should have disabled all access from this ex-admin
You can't. Not from an admin.
Same as how if you are rooted the only advice is to reinstall. It's simply impossible to reliably undo everything from inside the machine.
If you are a company, reimage the machine, then reinstall everything, and copy the code fresh from known good source control (and hope someone was watching source control that the admin did not check something in).
Of course you can. The moment his account is deactivated, he should not be able to access any machine in the system. Unless of course, he installed proactively backdoors, which is a criminal offense, at least here in Germany. And with a proper setup, he should not get random remote access.
Unless you have exceptionally good controls it's very hard to be sure there is not an SSH key sitting on some machine that would allow access and possible nefarious activity by a dishonest ex-administrator
This is one of many great reasons to rotate them regularly in an automated way. e.g. https://derpops.bike/2014/06/07/ssh-key-rotation-with-ansibl... or update it in your master image / wherever it comes from if doing immutable system images for deployments.
edit: also, use a bastion host which has the keys on it and don't allow them to be removed / used from laptops directly.
Let your Puppet/Ansible clear out all non-managed keys. If it's not in version control, you don't know who did what when. That's a nightmare as soon as you are more than two admins.
Also, the CA mode of OpenSSH is great. More people should use it. It's like PKI but sane.
As a Korean American who also has worked at Samsung headquarters, I think it's more of bad news than good news, no matter how Joyent wants to spin it.
Its corporate culture only allows the most cunning, politically savvy person to stay alive and move up the rank, and thus most executives (all if I limit it to small sample of executives I've personally met) fit that model.
And shit literally flows downwards, where goals/promises set by them would be pushed downwards and engineers have to take the burden.
It doesn't help that Korean society is very hierarchal and based on Confucius principles, where you don't usually challenge older persons and/or someone higher in the rank. This is one example that describes serious problem - http://thediplomat.com/2013/07/asiana-airlines-crash-a-cockp....
For those of you who are intrigued and have time, I suggest watching Misaeng with English subtitles (https://www.viki.com/tv/20812c-incomplete-life). Samsung isn't as bad, but the same hierarchy, verbal abuse, social dynamics, and strict rules on paper format exist.
The best outcome would be if they leave Joyent's management and culture alone. But I doubt it.
I also have the first-hand experience of their applying the same "consumer electronics" mentality to completely different business which required high-touch sales.
There is no denying success of Samsung - multi-billion, international corporation. However, Samsung is only good at generating quality hardware products at mass scale. There have not been success in any sort of software and services. Perhaps they are trying to expand beyond their strengths, and I applaud that effort and they actually do need it, since it's only matter of time Chinese companies will catch up and produce as quality products as Samsung, as Samsung did to Sony. I hope it bears fruits. I hope they can allow Joyent to succeed and thrive, and learn from that.
As a Korean American, I highly doubt that this will work. Of all the things, I think the most limiting factor will be talents. I've been working in Silicon Valley for a while, and I've witnessed many innovations being created here because of diverse talents. I've been amazed at creative solutions collective intelligence from various background and ethnicity have come up with. Silicon valley attracts brightest minds from everywhere in the world. Korea is a homogeneous country with very limited number of immigrants, and also from my experience, I've yet to met anyone whose thoughts and mindset blew me away. They are always inundated with shitty social/work cultures, they can't get out of their small bubble. It's truly tragic. Korean conglomerates and government are good at killing good talents and promote politicians.
Would it be conceivable that similar type of AI can deploy and manage unmanned military vehicles, e.g. unmanned drones and tanks, and monitor battle progress (assuming that the other side is managed by human)? It wouldn't necessarily be turn-based, but constantly evaluating its moves against changing environment outside its control and reach its objective? I think such future is conceivable and scary at the same time.
First of all, it's not what SV can learn from them, it's US carriers and gov't who should learn from Korea.
Second, SV companies are doing just fine, creating products that are right for the market under given infrastructure. Should the market/infrastructure change, SV companies will adapt and create products/services fit for the market. I don't believe SV companies' products behind. They are just right for the markets they serve, as Korean products are right for Korean market.
I get that for some "big corp" jobs could be more rewarding, and I am sure some are. However, my experiences at "big corp" jobs have been nothing but disappointing. For example, I've worked for/with incompetent managers who are good at "gaming" the system to be where they are and totally suck at managing people, incompetent colleagues who create more problems than solving any and do not seem to want to learn new things or correct their mistakes.
Startup jobs are definitely more stressful, and co-founders have enormous impact on the company, but I would always take startup jobs, where I can work with and learn from smart people (as long as there is a good team chemistry and no one is an asshole), over "big corp" jobs.
> where I can work with and learn from smart people
People always say this, but in every startup I've joined, I've ended up being the most experienced tech person on the team. Never really ended up learning anything (in my field) that I didn't just teach myself on my off-hours.
Now, I've learned quite a bit about business from working for startups—with just as many "don'ts" as "do"s—but that hasn't helped me become better in the ways I was looking to become better. If I wanted to start a company, I'd be much more ready—but if I just want to code something, I'm no more ready than if I had just spent the last five years working on my own hobby projects.
For all this talk about SV talent, and startups being filled with smart people, from experience, it's crap. I've been consulting with various SV startups recently and between crappy code and more crappy code, I've learned a lot more working for 'big bad companies' than startups
I just saw this on 11PM news on TV. This sounds serious, since it seems like there is no cure at this point and they have no idea the cause or how this is being spread. This needs more coverage.
Am I the only one who is skeptical about this announcement? I am sure the amount of data Facebook has will be huge asset to any sort of AI development, but precisely because of the amount of data and the kinds of data they have, it's just scary what this could be used for...
AI that has personal information of 500M+ people, using it to manipulate people...(first to click on advertisements, and then much more). In the hands of government, I shudder to think what's possible. With NSA already snooping around, perhaps it's not all that distant.
The announcement of an organization who's revenue is based on advertising doing research into AI deeply scares me. Take a look at this MIT study. Each day our corporation based government takes a step closer to 1984 and each day people become more and more apathetic and quick to change the subject at the first sign of the conversation.
Would facebook's data actually be useful to the NSA? I think they would get a lot more actionable data out of emails, SMSes, phone transcripts, accounting software, project management software, etc. The only thing I can imagine facebook being good for is perhaps knowing who they want to start looking at in the future. Search engine history might be more effective for that, though.
This is a list of information and resources for SF Bay Area fires. It's on a site I have been developing on and off for some time. I would appreciate any feedback you have.