The Art of Deception_ Controlling the Human Element of Security - Kevin D. Mitnick [33]
Here’s a story that illustrates once again how companies fool themselves every day into thinking their security practices, designed by experienced, competent, professionals, cannot be circumvented.
Steve Cramer’s Story
It wasn’t a big lawn, not one of those expensively seeded spreads. It garnered no envy. And it certainly wasn’t big enough to give him an excuse for buying a sit-down mower, which was fine because he wouldn’t have used one anyway. Steve enjoyed cutting the grass with a hand-mower because it took longer, and the chore provided a convenient excuse to focus on his own thoughts instead of listening to Anna telling him stories about the people at the bank where she worked or explaining errands for him to do. He hated those honey-do lists that had become an integral part of his weekends. It flashed though his mind that 12-year-old Pete was damn smart to join the swimming team. Now he’d have to be at practice or a meet every Saturday so he wouldn’t get stuck with Saturday chores.
Some people might think Steve’s job designing new devices for GeminiMed Medical Products was boring; Steve knew he was saving lives. Steve thought of himself as being in a creative line of work. Artist, music composer, engineer—in Steve’s view they all faced the same kind of challenge he did: They created something that no one had ever done before. And his latest, an intriguingly clever new type of heart stent, would be his proudest achievement yet.
It was almost 11:30 on this particular Saturday, and Steve was annoyed because he had almost finished cutting the grass and hadn’t made any real progress in figuring out how to reduce the power requirement on the heart stent, the last remaining hurdle. A perfect problem to mull over while mowing, but no solution had come.
Anna appeared at the door, her hair covered in the red paisley cowboy scarf she always wore when dusting. “Phone call,” she shouted to him. “Somebody from work.”
“Who?” Steve shouted back.
“Ralph something. I think.”
Ralph? Steve couldn’t remember anybody at GeminiMed named Ralph who might be calling on a weekend. But Anna probably had the name wrong.
“Steve, this is Ramon Perez in Tech Support.” Ramon—how in the world did Anna get from a Hispanic name to Ralph, Steve wondered.
“This is just a courtesy call,” Ramon was saying. “Three of the servers are down, we think maybe a worm, and we have to wipe the drives and restore from backup. We should be able to have your files up and running by Wednesday or Thursday. If we’re lucky.”
“Absolutely unacceptable,” Steve said firmly, trying not to let his frustration take over. How could these people be so stupid? Did they really think he could manage without access to his files all weekend and most of next week? “No way. I’m going to sit down at my home terminal in just about two hours and I will need access to my files. Am I making this clear?”
“Yeah, well, everybody I’ve called so far wants to be at the top of the list. I gave up my weekend to come in and work on this and it’s no fun having everybody I talk to get pissed at me.”
“I’m on a tight deadline, the company is counting on this; I’ve got to get work done this afternoon. What part of this do you not understand?”
“I’ve still got a lot of people to call before I can even get started,” Ramon said. “How about we say you’ll have your files by Tuesday?”
“Not Tuesday, not Monday, today. NOW!” Steve said, wondering who he was going to call if he couldn’t get his point through this guy’s thick skull.
“Okay, okay,” Ramon said, and Steve could hear him breathe a sigh of annoyance. “Let me see what I can do to get you going. You use the RM22 server, right?”
“RM22 and the GM16. Both.”
“Right. Okay, I can cut some corners, save