> Then you'd come back from lunch and find the mantrap doors propped open, or someone left a workstation unlocked with root access to something important, or random guests just wandering around. It's a miracle we never were compromised by a disgruntled employee (of which there were many).
Maybe not the most technical solution to this, but one of my previous employers had a workplace culture of setting the desktop background to a rainbow with unicorns if someone left their computer unlocked. Sometimes even teams of two would work together to pwn some of the more alert members, by temporarily keeping them distracted while the other "attacker" did the business.
3 or more fails and the background bumped up to something pretty gross that nobody wanted, simply as a practical matter.
I actually thought gamifying it made it pretty fun, and at least for workstation locking, we were elite. Even today I'm sharp about it. Maybe it could be extended to physical access to areas as well.
Yup, we had two approaches. You could send out an "I love purple flowers" email to everyone, or the victim would be "Hoffed." That meant setting the desktop background to that picture of David Hasselhoff, nude with strategically-placed pups.
I worked at a place that did something similar. If you walked away from your unlocked computer, when you came back you might find you'd sent an email to everyone in the office saying that you're buying lunch today.
Yeah, this is funny, but a bad idea. You getting on somebody elses workstation, under their login - what happens if they are doing bad shit to the company? Now you have to explain why you were seen on their workstation.
We used to do this at LAN parties in the 90s... of course goatse was the preferred background. People quickly learned never to leave their seats for more than 30 seconds. Most people would just do a 5-10 minute power-nap in their chairs.
Doesn't even need to use unicorns or something gross, the simple fact that the person was perceived as a "he got caught" is enought. Yes, shaming has its uses...
Maybe not the most technical solution to this, but one of my previous employers had a workplace culture of setting the desktop background to a rainbow with unicorns if someone left their computer unlocked. Sometimes even teams of two would work together to pwn some of the more alert members, by temporarily keeping them distracted while the other "attacker" did the business.
3 or more fails and the background bumped up to something pretty gross that nobody wanted, simply as a practical matter.
I actually thought gamifying it made it pretty fun, and at least for workstation locking, we were elite. Even today I'm sharp about it. Maybe it could be extended to physical access to areas as well.