S1E11: "PMS (Project Management Sucks)"

Posted 2016-07-18 08:26
Modified 2017-01-28 23:37
Comments 0

Project management a little and increased password policy security for GNU/Linux. We also have a guest, Forge/Rich Mingin, whom you might see often in our IRC channel.

This is the episode where the bleeping/censoring inside joke started.

• News
• Notes
• Sysbadministration Award
• Errata
• Music

News

Starts at 7m53s.

• There’s Android malware that’s pretending to be Whatsapp, Uber, and Google Play.
  • And some apps, like Leveldropper, just straight up r00t you.
• As it turns out, 78% of resold hard drives still have data on them.
• TP-Link lost control of some domains.
  • Apparently, the domains are being held ransom for 2.5 million USD. Looks like we won’t get to use those as a forward to our site…
• Hurrah, a new UEFI exploit.
• The US Customs want to know your social media accounts…
• There’s a new Mac OS X (possibly soon to be macOS) exploit out, and booooy it’s a doozy!
• Windows has fullscreen popups to upgrade…
  • BUT at least they’re reverting the whole hitting-the-X-kicks-off-the-upgrade thing we reported on in S1E8.
• FOSSCON2016!
• Jthan thought base64 was encryption, not encoding.
  • I mean, for Pete’s sake, you can even reverse it by hand simply by reading how it works.
  • Much like ROT13.

Notes

Starts at 15m45s.

I was drinking the same rum (IT’S GONE NOW). Jthan was drinking a Watermelon Kolsch from FATE Brewing Co.. Paden was drinking Stella Artois ‘cause he fancy. Forge was drinking Pepsi Throwback.

• Project management sucks
  • I mention Flyspray
    • And this bug.
  • And JIRA and Confluence.
  • And Kanban cards.
  • Jthan’s been working on Taiga.
  • And gave us the inspiration for the episode title!
  • Jthan gives us the following neat idea:
    pre. we have a 1-hour weekly meeting. First thing everyone is going to do is take a piece of paper and write down the thing they spent/wasted the most time on since the last meeting. and just put the piece of paper in a basket. then after 2-3 weeks.. go through.. look for trends find a way to waste less time doing whatever is popping up most. I want to streamline our admin tasks tremendously so that I can spend more time programming and doing education-type stuff in the building.

• It’s pretty easy to change/modify/improve/get creative with your GNU/Linux authentication and password policy. (46m05s)

Sysbadministration Award

In this segment, we highlight system administration mistakes. Think of them as the IT equivalent of the Darwin Awards. (57m00s)

A tale comes from our IRC channel:

<[REDACTED]> so
<[REDACTED]> netops team comes to me
<[REDACTED]> "approve this change"
<[REDACTED]> alright
<[REDACTED]> look into it, new IP for our mailing provider, whatever
<[REDACTED]> check it, points to hughesnet, in what i think is their home range
<[REDACTED]> ...what
<[REDACTED]> dig a little more, the company we use uses aws, so that makes it even stranger
<[REDACTED]> "where did you get this?"
<[REDACTED]> 'oh, the tech in the basement told us to allow it though the firewall'
<[REDACTED]> "yeah....i need you to contact that company and check that tech's credentials please"
<[REDACTED]> to my infinite surprise, they are doing just that, but still, wtf
<[REDACTED]> granted, if it's a valid request from the company, nbd
<[REDACTED]> but it's still rather odd
<[REDACTED]> r00t^2, i got a response back
<[REDACTED]> it was a typo
<[REDACTED]> and in the response
<[REDACTED]> they sent me some internal communications
<[REDACTED]> that included passwords and numbers to their dial in modem banks

Errata

• I’m unable to find Jthan’s reference to broken Admin logins on Taiga when using LDAP auth.
• It seems Jthan was indeed the one who asked me on 06.17.2016 at 14:48:24EDT. And yep, I answered with the same article link.
• Those bleeps? Not just for comedic effect. Jthan WAILED on real people, and their names have been censored to preserve their privacy and dignity. Don’t ask who, because we won’t tell you.

Music

Author r00t^2
Categories Season One