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With users like this, who needs to phish?

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by deepsand

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Many Would Trade Password For A Grande Mocha

By , InternetWeek
May 6, 2005 (12:39 PM)
URL: [v]http://www.internetweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=162800314 [/v]

What'll it take to get you to give up your password?
Apparently nothing more than a latte by the results of a marketing stunt run in San Francisco Thursday. In a very unscientific poll, two-thirds of the 272 people approached by VeriSign willingly gave up an electronic password for a $3 Starbucks coupon.

Among the easy marks, 79 percent admitted that they use the same password to access more than one application or Web site, a common practice that means the loss of one password increases the risk of damage or identity theft.

The down-and-dirty survey also confirmed what anyone who works in an office already knows: Some people are more worried about forgetting their password than it being stolen, and scribble it on Post-Its stuck to their monitor

26 replies

by murr

we are fighting a loosing battle....

maybe I should switch sides ;-)

by deepsand

Just make sure to first move to a country with no extradition treaty with the rest of the world.

by hal 9000

They write down their passwords on one of those sticky bits of paper and hide them under their keyboards. :D

Not on the bottom of the Keyboard but on the desk below the keyboard so they only have to move the keyboard slightly to get their passwords. :)

Col ]:)

by stress junkie

All of the bad guys look for the password on the bottom of the keyboard or right on the monitor. If the password is stuck to the desk under the keyboard nobody will find it there. And it's so much more convenient too. Have you tried typing in a password with the keyboard upside down. It's a struggle. I'm going to adopt that 'under the keyboard' technique myself. Thanks for the idea!!! Forget the note paper, though. I'm going to engrave my password into the top of the desk. It'll be good forever since I never change my password anyway.

by alangeek

All these years I've been memorizing my password because I couldn't type with my keyboard upside-down! I could have saved those brain cells for something useful like underwater basket weaving, except that I can't hold my breath long enough...

by black panther

most of the users forget their password after every weekend after heavy drinking- so we have to reset them once a week! :)

by hal 9000

Biometric scanners works a treat and they don't need to have their passwords stored close to the keyboard.

It doesn't matter how drunk they get even at an office party their finger prints still remain the same and with the keyboards with the scanner built in not much extra desk space is required.

It is a bit more difficult with LT's though and then I have one guy who is a real "Bright Spark" seems to have a lot of static electricity on him so he mucks up both the scanners and LT pointing devices. But that problem isn't confined to just the hardware as I've heard a lot of people complain that they get a jolt from him when they walk into his office and he shakes their hand or touches them some other way.

He's about my only real problem as far as hardware goes as he insists on having a LT to work with, when he's in the office he plugs in an external Keyboard/mouse that has been modified with a earthing plate inserted onto the keyboard so all he does is touch that on a regular basis and problem solved. I just have accepted if the keyboard breaks there will be no warranty on it but they are fairly cheap to replace so I'm not overly concerned. When he's in the field with the LT it's a totally different story as he can not move the pointer around smoothly it just jumps all over the place and since this has happened on 20 different LT's and different makes I'm inclined to believe that it's just him. Of course he has a short attention span just to make matters worse and expects things to work first time every time which makes it kind of hard to help him but somehow I manage.

Col ]:)

by black panther

Some of the users work in our "dirty" warehouse where currently you can hardly see the letters on the keyboard as their hands are constantly dirty.

How well does/would the "fingerprint" technology work in this environment???

by sleepin'dawg

After moving into new premises we dicovered nylon carpets and rubber soled footwear can cause this effect. We had a guy like that once and it drove everyone nuts because his job took him around the office from time to time and everywhere he went he left a trail of zapped items in his wake. At first we didn't recognize that the problem was mainly centered on one guy; we ripped out all the nylon carpeting and replaced it with something in polypropolene which had a much lower rate of static discharge. That eliminated most of the problem but we would still have incidents occasionally. It quickly became apparent that the problem was centered on one individual. Still what would make one guy a lightning rod and not the rest of us??? Someone pointed out that he had a tendancy towards hard rubber soles and that friction even on the polypropolene carpets could generate a charge with those things. We had our culprit. We called him in and told him his particular choice of footwear was banned from the premises after which the vast majority of incidents disappeared. Grounding strips took care of the balance. Maybe you have a similar problem. Check it out.

Dawg

by stress junkie

I'd be willing to bet that this guy has odor absorbing shoe inserts. The shoe inserts probably have charcoal embedded in the material. Walking around will compress the charcoal which generates electricity.

by jaqui

after they have used the password to log in 3 times, have it changed by random generator.
make the passwords length 100 characters long.

when they bitcz about it. tell them that this will not be changed, and it is because of thier writing the passwords down, and not keeping things secure.

if they don't like working in a secure environment, there's the door, don't let it hit your a$$ on the way out.

quitters don't get compensation.
quitters don't get severance.
quitters screw themselves by quitting.

after a couple of years, you can go back to monthly passwords. they will all be able to handle the responsability for security.

by hal 9000

Over the scanner just like they do in motor racing for the visors of the drivers helmets. But if the keyboard gets that dirty at least you know the people who use it know how to touch type don't you? :D

You should see some of the keyboards that I work with you can no longer read them as the letters have actually worn off by constant use. Of course being filled with moldy coffee doesn't help them much either. But some of them are set to different regions so the letters do not even match up and they are the real problems that I have to deal with and they drive me nuts although the people who use them know just where everything on their keyboards is and resist me changing them until at least half the thing no longer works and then they demand exactly the same make and model keyboard as a replacement. Good thing for places like that I always keep half a dozen spare for wear out. :D

Col ]:)

by hal 9000

It's a combination of carpets rubber hard soled shoes and synthetic clothing and this guy is an ex heavy equipment driver so he is more likely to hit you as soon as look at you or more likely to float out something bigger than a D8 {bulldozer} and give you a piratical demonstration on your house at 2.00 AM by dropping the blade to about half an inch above the ground and driving from the road until the rubble has knocked over the back fence.

What is even worse is that he moves around a lot and is constantly recommending me to all of his contacts so I can't hit back. :(

The last time I suggested very nicely that maybe his choice of clothing may be part of the problem I was told that the BLOODY THING SHOULD WORK regardless and then he proceeded to run over his desktop with a 40 ton excavator. Well he parked one of the tracks on it anyway. :)

He is as mad as a hatter and everyone knows it but he sells stuff at an alarming rate so his little "Ways" are tolerated but the desktop was one of the best as he threw a fit after selling a couple of million $ worth of plant and he just couldn't bear to work with it his words here "That steam powered heap of S##T that passed for a computer!" He just killed the case and left everything else on his desk. I had to leave as I was falling over laughing and it didn't look all that good to the owner of the place. :D

The real trouble is the guy in question as he is just that way so I attempt to work around him without getting him off side I just don't trust him all that much particularly after one meeting that I was present at where he was speaking to a bunch of Bureaucrats and the Department Minister he started off by telling her a dirty joke and it was very off color one, one of the x rated to the 19999999 power. I just tried to leave the room so it didn't look as if I was involved in the slightest and I fully expected the Feds to very gently show us all the door from the footpath after throwing us all out of the 24 th story window. But the mad SOB sold them a heap of stuff that they didn't want and what is even worse made them think that they had not only got a great deal but had a heap of equipment that they needed all along. This guy could sell coal to the Devil to make the place a bit warmer or ice to the Eskimo's. :)

He's really a nice guy provided you do the right thing by him and I'm no where near brave enough to upset him overly much. But after he parked the excavator on the box he just walked in and said "Col my computer doesn't appear to be working can you fix it please?" It was at that point that I had to leave the place before I upset too many others.

Col ]:)

by hal 9000

Then you'll really know what STRESS IS I have to deal with this guy and because he recommends me to all of his contacts I have to see them as well none of my staff are acceptable just me.

He is a one man disaster area but is always good for a laugh it's just that most of the time he makes you laugh at the most inopportune times and delights in doing it. :(

Col ]:)

by bhunsinger

but hey, 3 guys like that who recommend me would set up our shop with work for weeks.
"It shoud bloody work regardless" is about to get typed up on a cartoon. Thanks.

by hal 9000

It's never boring being around him! :D

Any you're welcome to his saying as he uses it all the time no matter what the item is it can range from a LT to a D12 CAT it just should work no matter what but he'll accept that the big things need fuel and also that the LT will not work without power for very long so he's not totally unreasonable just not interested in learning anything more than he requires for his job. :)

Col ]:)

by hal 9000

SCUBA Diving so you can stay under longer. ;)

Remember in a swimming pool there are no sharks. :D

Col ]:)

by bearyann

When we went to a new medical software and told users they would be accountable for any entry made with their login, they very quickly accepted the idea of keeping passwords private and unposted.

by stress junkie

I've seen plenty of places where end users' managers wouldn't take any action when end users don't follow policies.

by kevaburg

I only ask because as a consultant I was asked to determine the cause of a serious breach of information security for one of my clients. I found VPN software in use with a password of HQ and a username the same. Judging by the amount of scanning found in the logs it was a brute force (if it can be called that) password hack.

And whats more it was the same password for every administrator either in the firm or out-sourced.

Do these people not realise how important their information is?

by hal 9000

But what they do not understand is just how vulnerable that very same information actually is they just seem to think some form of magic is performed to keep everything safe no matter what they do. :D

At one place where I used to work before they went broke they has dial up modems built into the computers and connected 24/7. When I suggested that this might not be such a good idea and if they really needed dial up on each and every machine maybe the way to go would be to use external modems and switch them off when not in use I was just laughed at. They didn't have the available desk space that would be required by the external modem. Then they proceeded to tell me just how secure things where. :D

Well that night just to prove a point I hacked the managers computer and downloaded their entire accounting program and all of its data burnt it to a CD and handed it to the person the following day with a comment about "Look what I found last night while I was unwinding." Well about half a day latter when she actually looked at the CD's things went to Hell in a Hand-basket very quickly. But I did get to lock down the entire system much better and at least made it far more secure than it was previously and for some strange reason they suddenly found the extra space required for all of those external modems. :)

Col ]:)

by deepsand

Users come from all walks of live, all cultural & ethnic backgrounds, all socio-ecomomic strata, etc..

In short, they are representative of humanity as a whole; and, therefore, no particular types of users are immune from being stupid.

by bfilmfan

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity and you will never be suprised at a security breach.

by deepsand

Many's the time I've been taken to task for observing & remarking on the innate stupidity of the masses.

Still, the evidence of such continues to roll in.

by jmgarvin

How are they gonna know? :-)

I would kill for a grande caramel/mocha frap right now...we just learned about our new and "improved" medical benefits! :-(

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