Do You Write Backdoors? 1004
quaxzarron asks: "I had a recent experience where one of our group of programmers wrote backdoors on some web applications we were developing, so that he could gain access to the main hosting server when the application went live. This got me thinking about how we are dependent on the integrity of the coders for the integrity of our applications. Yet in this case a more than casual glance would allow us to identify potentially malicious code. How does this work when the clients are companies who can't perform such checks - either because they don't know how, or because the code is too large or too complex? How often do companies developing code officially sanction backdoors...even if means calling them 'security features'? How often has the Slashdot crowd put a backdoor in the code they were developing either officially or otherwise? How sustainable is the 'trust' between the developer and the client?"
Deadlines (Score:5, Insightful)
The last thing I'm thinking about when rushing towards the deadline is some fancy backdoor into a web app I'll probably never use anyway.
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Informative)
Some people write backdoors to facilitate debugging. They don't have to worry about checking with the customer for various passwords - they just type in "IAMGOD" or some such hard-coded password and they are in.
For the record, I don't approve of backdoors. First, they provide security issues - someone just has to look through the executable for strings. Second, these things are never changed when employees move on.
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're the sysadmin, then it's not a backdoor. After all, you could just fire up a debugger on the process and find out anything you wanted, passwords, data, anything. Or log onto the database as the DBA and just query the tables directly. Or place a packet sniffer on the network.
A back door implies that it gives you something you couldn't and shouldn't have.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Insightful)
If they fire him tomorrow, they have no way of removing his access from the system, since they don't even know it's there.
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Funny)
Any method of gaining access that circumnavigates the established security procedures is a back door.
Hey dude, I thought circumnavigate meant something like circle without penetrating, or something like that. Like, in the seven cities of gold days you would circumnavigate the new world on a couple of trips, go back to spain and get more men and boats and stuff, and then go back to start your exploration of the interior.
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Funny)
At least he didn't use "circumcise."
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Informative)
If they fire him tomorrow, they have no way of removing his access from the system, since they don't even know it's there
Everyone seems to focus on the actual piece of code that acts as a 'backdoor' and forgets that just knowledge of the system is just as dangerous. No sufficiently complex system can be foolproof both in design and implementation. During developent debugging code gets left over, some shortcuts are taken, etc.etc. Nobody except the developers who designed and wrote the stuff even know about what exactly is in the code. While I do not put any backdoors in my code intentionally, I have the sufficient knowledge of the system to poke a few holes big enough for a full compromise.
In short: If you have a sufficiently large system, chances are that a disgruntled developer can compromise or damage it even without placing any backdoors in the code ahead of time. Knowledge is power. Obviously, this does not apply to open-source projects that receive a fair amount of peer review (or just people tinkering with the code).
Re:Deadlines (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems to me those vulnerabilities should qualify as problems you address before you ship the product. I'll grant that some of these kinds of problems may have very low criticality -- for example, they may require physical access to the machine and unusual permissions, in which case you're probably screwed anyway -- but it doesn't sound like you're talking about that kind of scenario.
Basically you're talking about bugs. Just because it doesn't cause the machine to crash or set off alarms with your QA testers doesn't make it any less worthy of fixing.
It seems likely none of that is news to you, but somebody had to say it...
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Interesting)
You're not developing the project for a "master user," you're developing it for normal users. Debugging code while in the "master" mode will do nothing more than give you a false sense of whether your code is buggy or not.
It's like installing an app, and then testing it as root. It doesn't tell you anything, and it makes user's lives miserable when they can't get something to work.
Re:Deadlines (Score:4, Informative)
I think you misunderstand what my message meant: I don't have a "master" mode, I have a overriding password that bypasses the standard authentication system and lets the admin user assume the username/authentication details of an arbitrary user. That's important so I can have the same experience as that user. It doesn't compromise any data security, as I can just as easily see all the user's data when it's sitting on the database server.
Re:Deadlines (Score:4, Interesting)
This is something I wish more systems had, but not in a hardcoded (backdoor) way. Cyrus SASL/IMAPd does it correctly: they've completely separated the concepts of authentication and authorization. So you can say "until further notice, user slamb can log in and do anything user bob can do." It serves the same purpose, but in a maintainable, open way. You can have a group of administrators that can log in as anyone, but without needing to know either everyone's password or some master password that's difficult to change if someone leaves...they can just use their own, and it can be disabled/enabled on a per-person easily.
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Funny)
he may not mean what you think he means
Job Security (was Re: Deadlines) (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw first hand how back dooring software could provide job security for one developer.
I worked at a company that produced some very complex financial and utilities management software. They needed a way to have these two applications talk to each other and their solution was a daemon to act as a conduit between the two. Since it had to assume user privs the daemon was set to run root suid.
The code had been in production for quite some time when it was assigned to developer to maintain. The code was a mess (it had been written originally by people unfamiliar with programming in the Un*x environment). The developer was tasked with cleaning up the code if he could. Since they were very busy there was little or no supervision over him. As long as the daemon worked everyone was happy.
Eventually the development department decided to restructure and investigated letting this guy go. He had a reputation of being a bit of a hacker so they came to me (I being the Un*x/Network admin at the time) to see how we might protect ourselves from reprisals should he be let go.
I was fairly confident that my systems were tight. The biggest weakness as I saw it was this daemon. So I checked out the source code and started going through it. As I did, I discovered that this simple daemon had developed some new and interesting features. Along with it's normal duties, it also doubled as a telnet daemon (you could telnet to the listening port and login just as in telnet - except this one would ignore /etc/securetty thus allowing remote root logins over an
unencrypted protocol). Another feature was it's ability to tunnel other
ports through it's own listening port.
The code was too convoluted for me to get a complete grasp on it in the time alloted. I went back to the VP of development, pointed out what I had found, and suggested that he would need to have every piece of code this guy had worked on audited to make sure it was clear of back doors. He visibly paled. The developer in question had been there for over 5 years by this point and had touched nearly everything at one time or another.
In the end they simply moved him to another department (he is still there as far as I know). They felt it was too cost prohibitive (and dangerous) to let him go.
They never did tell their customers about these gaping security holes either.
Lessons learned:
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Interesting)
For this reason, if I write in backdoors like that in a PHP script (a single admin password, for example), I don't actually store the password in a database or the script plaintext, I use an MD5 hash. Even if someone somehow manages to see it (they shouldn't anyway), it's still hard for them to guess what the password is (which they need to POST to the script).
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, backdoors often facilitate debugging, which is why they may be in there. You don't have time to build proper debugging tools so you whip up a backdoor..
And since both of these scenarios involve short amounts of available time, they are likely to be poorly coded, forgotten, and one day exploited.
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of something... I wonder how many holes were implemented in the Y2K fiasco?
Michael: It's pretty brilliant. What it does is where there's a bank transaction, and the interests are computed in the thousands a day in fractions of a cent, which it usually rounds off. What this does is it takes those remainders and puts it into your account.
Peter: This sounds familiar.
Michael: Yeah. They did this in Superman III.
Peter: Yeah. What a good movie.
Michael: A bunch of hackers did this in the 70s and one of them got busted.
Peter: Well, so they check for this now?
Michael: Initech's so backed up with all the software we're updating for the year 2000, they'd never notice.
Peter: You're right. And even if they wanted to, they could never check all that code.
Michael: It's numbers up their asses.
Peter: So, Michael, what's to keep you from doing this?
Michael: It's not worth the risk. I got a good job.
Peter: What if you didn't have a good job?
Re:*Thumbs* Up Their Asses (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Interesting)
Please note - this link is to a theoretical discussion of how the first UNIX creators could have installed a very-hard-to-detect backdoor.
They never actually did this.
Anyway, this simple example wouldn't work, for two reasons:
1) It would leave lots of evidence behind in the log files - someone, somewhere, would eventually notice.
2) Not *every* c compiler was compiled by a cross compiler, creating an uninterrupted chain back to the original C compiler written at Bell Labs. A number of platforms were built from scratch, using bootstrap compilers rather than cross compilers.
Clever, though.
Sad day for Habitat for Humanity (Score:5, Funny)
Carter gave the reasoning in that "not too many of my projects spare enough time" for the installation of back doors, forcing many poverty stricken world citizens to walk all of the way around their home to get to the back yard.
President Carter was also overheard to give dismissive and disparaging remarks about Easter Eggs. The Easter Bunny was unavailable for comment.
Re:Perfectly true (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what, it's time we rebelled against stupid attitudes like yours. Everyone is sick of manager-badittidues which try to extract *EVERY LAST* ounce of productivity from employees.
They always justify their bullshit with statements like yours, if you aren't working 100%, 100% of the time, you are a theif. If you daydream for a second, you're stealing from the company.
My last boss would bog me down with "side projects" that I was supposed to work on "in my spare time" even though I was doing a 200% workload, all in an attempt to see *how far* they can push their employees. See how late they can get you to stay when they don't pay overtime, see just what the limit they can get away with.
Most backdoors take seconds to code, so fire the employee for being dishonest, not for stealing seconds from the company.
Re:RTFC. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RTFC. (Score:5, Insightful)
Writing code actually takes very little time. Engineering software properly requires a fair amount of thought. Giving a programmer an extra week to think about a problem before starting coding may end up saving hundreds of hours of re-coding later on. So if you care about long-term success you need to build up a collaborative environment where both management and development see eye-to-eye and have the greater goals of the organization at heart. No management 'formula' will give you that, and you won't be able to test your success anyway because who knows how good things could have been if they were done differently. It all comes down to talent, experience and teamwork in the end.
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Funny)
That is the insecure way to do it. If you want to make a backdoor, do it right:(and pick a better password).
Re:Deadlines (Score:5, Funny)
if ($password != "MyBackdoorPassword") VerifyPassword();
or:
if ($password != "!seineew era sreenigne epacsteN") VerifyPassword();
Of course (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Of course (Score:5, Funny)
Never have, never will (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, life is never that simple. I'm sure a backdoor has saved someone's ass on more than on occassion, because the admin forgot the root password or whatever. But don't be an asshole.
Fire the kid. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd also look into opening a criminal investigation.
Re:Fire the kid. (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally think it's my responsibility to AT LEAST make sure that I couldn't break into the systems that I build without having knowledge of the passwords or whatever. If I think of a way that I could get in without it, I fix it or contact the person currently responsible for the code and let them know about it and how I think it should be fixed.
Backdoors (Score:3, Funny)
To do what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Writing a back door is just more coding. Code for a while and see how much extraneous crap you write just for kicks.
Re:To do what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, how much extraneous [kernel.org] crap [gnu.org] do programmers [sourceforge.net] write just for kicks [freshmeat.net]?
--Joe
Re:To do what? (Score:5, Funny)
Haven't you seen Office Space? Most security breaches are by a company's own employees... most money lost illegally is due to the company's own employees. Reasons obviously include at least greed and revenge. And maybe bragging, but only to your girlfriend and the guy on the other side of the wall.
of course (Score:5, Funny)
I backdoor all the time.. (Score:5, Interesting)
How many times have we all heard, duhh.... I forgot my admin password, but I cant reinstall, I need the data.
So yes, I backdoor, and I document it internally (hardcopy stored in a safe). Its just an extra insurance policy for when some moron that I worked for 6 years ago does something stupid.
That said, coding backdoors for the sake of getting access to a web farm so you can host your own services is certainly a bad thing(tm). But hell, what are you gonna do? Everyone backdoors. Don't believe me? Watch someone 'in the know' log in to a random windows box using the System account and come talk to me.
Re:I backdoor all the time.. (Score:4, Funny)
Well I don't know about you, but I use the same combination as on my luggage.
Open Source? (Score:5, Insightful)
the short answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on the backdoor. (Score:5, Interesting)
Default passwords are as good as a backdoor (Score:5, Interesting)
Out of curiosity, from a personal machine, I tried logging in to as administrator to a few of these machines with the default password our product shipped with. It worked about half the time.
(Of course, one can't take the results of my search as suggesting that half of our customers didn't change their passwords, as the fact that these people hadn't updated the web image makes the fact that they didn't update the admin password wither not so surprising.)
Re:Default passwords are as good as a backdoor (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a thought, but remember the case of the Princeton professor [slashdot.org] who got in trouble for logging into a Yale site with obvious student credentials? If the act of writing backdoors isn't illegal, than the act logging in using them, or even with default passwords certainly is.
Security admins could tell you that default passwords are a BAD idea. Better to prompt the use on install, than have 2.5 million credit cards stolen from some retail site because they forgot to change a default password (or have a backdoor).
I know, I know, you're going to say that a company has a responsibility, and that they're the ones failing the consumers, but if we, as coders, know that a large percentage of the customer base isn't going to follow best practices, than shouldn't we be taken to task for allowing that possibility in the first place?
An application is an entire system, from how it's installed, to how it's used. And besides, it could be our own personal info that gets harvested at some point in the future...
SQL injection is mucho phun too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Security is much more likely breached through some SQL injection exploit than through default passwords. Don't believe me? Just go to a random smalltime e-commerce site. Watch you browser's title bar. If you see an URL of the form http://server.com/some/directory/path.asp?param1=v alue1¶m2=value, then try sneaking some quote character into one of the values in the URL. More often than not, you'll be greated with a Sequelserver or Access error message. A smart user can figure out from the error message which kind of database query the app used, and he can sneak in characters that will yield useful results...
If the database engine is Sequelserver, the attacker will try reading out the sysobjects and syscolumns table to figure out the schema, and from there he may harvest credit card numbers, names, addresses, or just play random pranks with the stored data.
If on the other hand, the database engine is Access, it's a tad more difficult (because in Access, the msysobjects table is by default protected, and its error messages contain less useful info too). In that case, you need to find the URL that allows administrative login (often called admin.asp, admin_login.asp or somesuch). And then just type '='' or 1=1 or ' into the login field, and you're in.
This works especially well against fly-by-night operations such as those advertised by spammers. Often spammers' remove-me links are vulnerable too (if you see .asp? in the remove-me URL, chances are that you can have some fun with it...). Great revenge tool if you get too much spam, or if you simply are bored!
Payment Insurance (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I work, we do similar things, but our motivation is to ensure that users are always running the latest version of our frequently updated codebase. We, as developers, do have the ability to run expired code via the backdoor.
Re:Payment Insurance (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, if my employer was skilled enough, he could've gone in and removed the code himself. This leads to the point of the trouble of joining Open Source and backdoors - as it's virtually impossible to do without some skilled programmer looking at it and being able to remove it. I thought you mind find that to be interesting.
Re:Payment Insurance (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I have a feeling there was bad stuff on both sides (and it's taken me a while to extract myself from this job), but you have to be careful when you destroy stuff. It's probably okay when you are deleting something that is your property and isn't paid for. But it's questionable if he already paid for part of the work, or if you were destroying any data created by his operations. If any money had been paid, or if it would compromise data that didn't belong to me, I wouldn't try it unless I had written something into the contract (I've seen pretty generic-looking contract terms which would imply you could effectively confiscate the work if it wasn't paid for). You also need to define when it's not paid for -- 30 days after completion, 60 days...? It's not professional to do something so forceful without making an effort to resolve things more peacefully.
Re:Payment Insurance (Score:4, Insightful)
and you are the kind of people that I loathe and will gladly assult on the street.
I have HAD to crack software my company legally owned to keep it working after the company that wrote it went out of business and is dead and buried. company that made it is gone, software DIES... That is pure bullcrap.
Please let me know what company you work for so I can make a reccomendation to my company to NEVER EVER buy your crippleware products.
Timebombs should be 100% illegal.. it's exactly like the car dealer coming and stealing your car after you bought it. If your company's software is a LEASE then you had better say so.
Happens everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Happens everywhere (Score:4, Informative)
A very different animal, indeed.
Backdoor? (Score:5, Interesting)
Its like that theory that BAE
Unlikely, but interesting concept all the same!
Re:Backdoor? (Score:4, Interesting)
Iran's F-14 force was effectively grounded by the embargo Carter placed after the fall of the Shah - fighters and other complex equipment need a steady stream of parts, and a veritable torrent under non-peacetime use. Search fas.org or aerospaceweb for "iran f-14" for a couple views on this, among other sites.
As pointed out, backdoors carry the risk of being used against you. But if you've got all the spare parts, you get to fly.
trust... (Score:5, Interesting)
I fulfilled my part of the bargain, but when it came to stock option maturity time, I got laid-off.. The company is still in business interestingly enough, and now posting profits even.
Who do you trust, and how is that trust repaid? I can tell you I no longer have the same sense of loyalty and trust in my employer. Companies are paying on average HALF of what they were for the same work 2 years ago.. Trust... works both ways or it doesn't work at all...
Time to become a contractor! (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is to say, most people who went into contracting did so just because of stories like you told. They got tired of being jerked around and decided a little uncertainty and paperwork was worth getting little freedom from the corporate brain washing about team and loyalty.
Granted, many went into it because of money during the dot-com boom. They are no longer contractors now ;-)
I'm loyal--to getting the job done, according to contract, as long as I'm getting paid. I produce results, give advice, and let the customer go his own way--even if they insist on taking themselves to hell in a handbasket.
It beats getting all worked up over stupid stuff at work.
I always loved the "We're a family" line I got when people tried to get me on as a FT employee. I don't know about you, but it is usually true--and they have all the problems that families have too. They can keep them ;-)
It's all about quality of life, man (Score:4, Interesting)
What my friend meant was that it usually takes a good amount of bitterness to make anyone consider contracting. It's a scary step and most are intimidated by their manager's comments about "contractors have no benefits".
That's all it meant--i.e. "perhaps you are now bitter enough to take a risk". But what you said still applies. I had many friends who were bitter enough to give it a try. Only one friend of mine did and is still doing it.
My comment was the same thing: if you feel that betrayed, realize there are other options.
As for me, I did it because I was fed up with flushing my life down the drain in salaried positions. When I get paid by the hour, I find I get more equitable treatment. Employers *think* about what they want me to work on. And usually they are more serious--since my time equals money in a very easy to use formula. And I don't feel like I am being cheated when I get a heavy work load--more hours equals more compensation.
Less pay or not, salary is for suckers. Even if contracting is making half the money, right now pay is down across the board and salaried employees are being asked to work twice the hours. So do the math.
(OTOH, during the dotcom days, I made some serious money. Ah, things will never be like that again *g*)
For me, contracting is about quality of life--as in, I have one now.
Backdoors (Score:5, Interesting)
But when you think about it, all leaving a backdoor in a system does for you is to provide an opportunity of accessing a system in a way that you shouldn't be. This can lead to trouble down the line.
Clearly, there are legitimate uses for backdoors (to use in case of emergencies, etc.), but unless the backdoor is documented someplace for others in the software development group to be aware of, it's likely the kind of backdoor that is simply not ethical to implement, since it's only usable by one person.
I'm sure people can provide examples that disprove this, but for the majority of situations, as a developer, having a backdoor in a system can only lead to a security breach at some point ...
kind of... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am working on an app for the govt, and yes, I have programmed in a backdoor login, as it's very useful for testing and development.
However, the following are true:
1) management knows full well of its existence
2) BY DEFAULT, it is turned off in any build
3) it is NEVER to be deployed turned on
I think it's a good rule of thumb.
Re:kind of... (Score:3, Interesting)
That some Jr. programmer 5 years from now doesn't
forget to turn off the backdoor?
Hire developers directly (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe a good idea would be to bring on a full time development staff and pay them good money so they don't feel the need to try to get something more. Oh, and tell me where to send my resume once you create these new full time positions.
PHP Web-apps (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a small startup that specializes in custom web-applications for indy record labels and small-time bands and clubs. Our main product is a all-in-one web-app that will allow the customer to manage their shows, news, mailing list and numurous other things.
We offer several levels of this product, one being shared (get 1 account on our servers) which we control, standalone, and custom standalone (the standalones go on their own servers.) The latter two are designed to have one back-door login account for myself and the other programmer to go in there and edit their settings or database if the customer breaks something.
So there is my 2 cents. Yes, I put small backdoors in my company's web-apps per boss's request.
Not when I need to earn a living! (Score:5, Insightful)
If an intruder breaks into a database through a back door I put in (and let's face it, it is asking for trouble), I'm obliged to spend my valuable time closing the hole.
I'm not of the opinion that it's worth my time and money to show off what a great hacker I am - my clients are really the ones who matter, since they pay my wages, and my skills should be reflected in my work...
Sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
What really concerned me though was when we were supposed to store credit card numbers encrypted in the database and I used a simple replacement cypher as a placeholder. Then, when I later asked about putting real encryption routines in was told "we aren't going to do that".
So customers are really in the dark when it comes to the security of their software.
Rich
Unless it's an embedded app there's just no excuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Inadvertent Backdoors (Score:5, Interesting)
Doing things like
Anyways, my point is that most backdoors put in by developers seem to be accidental rather than intentional.
possible legal actions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would this be considered felony fraud? The more I think about it, the more I hope so. Think about this -- one coder acting alone could cost a company millions of dollars in lost profit and trust. This would be more than that coder will probably earn in normal income thruout his entire life. I think this is one case where a jury SHOULD seriously consider decades of imprisonment. This isn't a simple case of a kid using DeCSS or defacing a website, this is case of one person destroying the image and trust of an entire company.
Re:possible legal actions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like a true American.
consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to help, but... (Score:3, Funny)
why would you put in a back door? (Score:3, Insightful)
2)if it's useful or necessary, then it should be in the requirements. But it's not a back door anymore (maybe a side door?)
Legal and not (Score:3, Insightful)
Putting backdoors is unethical, but possibly not illegal depending upon how you make your software available (i.e. license terms and conditions). It may only be illegal where you _use_ the backdoor (because you are then technically trespassing on property of another), or if someone else uses the backdoor (you could be held in negligence).
I've been involved in a project where an easter egg was planted (command line interface to a subsystem, and if you enter right command, it will drop into a text RPG). You could get in trouble for this in certain ways:
(a) wasting client money (if the program developed under contract and this functionality is outside of the scope of the development agreement);
(b) negligence/action if something goes wrong with the functionality or leads to lack of performance of the software, etc.
Most have some sort (Score:5, Insightful)
There are different extents to back doors. For example, in some filtering programs, you get admin access. In other programs, you have the ability to log in as a remote user. In another, you can bypass the encrytion passcodes.
Having a remote access backdoor saves lots of trips to a customer site. Having a backdoor for admin access is good when they lose their passwords. Or remotely shutting down the application is good when they don't pay.
There is also the other site to consider, if there is a back door, the application is clearly less secure.
You have to balance the lack of security caused by this by the need for the features the different back doors offer.
You should tell the client about this, but then it is a problem. If you tell people about back doors, some people may try to hack it. Having the remote ability to shut down an application may defeat the purpose.
Make sure you get paid. (Score:4, Interesting)
The guy decided to be a dick about it and not pay him the money he deserved.
Fortunately for him he put a backdoor in. He told the guy about it. Once activated the system would not work until a password only he knew was entered.
His payment was promptly received. (He got the idea from a movie.)
Re:Make sure you get paid. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Make sure you get paid. (Score:4, Funny)
MS Easter Eggs (Score:4, Interesting)
Missing option: (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought this was a poll.
In a previous life (Score:4, Interesting)
Savvier customers changed the username and password (the rule required the user_id entry to stay in the db. But you could change the username/pass to keep undesirables out of the system. Yet many of the customers didn't ever even officially "discover" it... Before I left I never heard of any malicious things being done with this account, but as I told my boss the day I found out about it, "Its only a matter of time."
I left when everybody around me started getting ".com" fever. Like, wacky. People who made $50k annually were leveraging a fortune in paper stock options to buy brand new Mercedes Benzes and hot tubs...
Always. Always. Always. (Score:5, Informative)
This is hard to see from a large-company perspective, because as a developer you aren't the one collecting the money, you have accountants and lawyers and rabid CEOs that make sure you get your contract's worth one way or another. But small companies don't have this option--they can't afford lawyers or even the time to spend in court. They have to find where their next paycheck is coming from.
As a result, many of our clients have tried to jerk us around by either dragging their heels on payments or doing something underhanded like changing passwords to servers to try to lock us out and give us the finger. There have been instances where I've sent out a "it's all done, check it out" email and had the live server's passwords changed on me minutes later, follwed by a "we're not paying" response.
Simply put, backdoors are a small company's only assurance that it will be paid for the work it has done. Given, the backdoors that I put in aren't to r00t the server or take down a whole subnet, they're limited to disabling the application that we developed. Until the client has paid their bills, it's still our code, and we have every right to put in as many backdoors as we want.
Re:Always. Always. Always. (Score:5, Insightful)
The outcome for you is the same. If you don't get paid, the system locks them out. The outcome for the client is that honest, paying clients don't have hidden (exploitable) backdoors living in their deployed system.
Do I write Backdoors? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry I haven't written in so long, but you know how busy things get. Maybe it's time for us to move on. I've found this great credit card database that uses default passwords. What can I say, it has so much more to offer.
Yours truly...
Any body with an ounce of integrity would (Score:5, Insightful)
Why open yourself up to potentially losing a client or just looking like an asshole just so you can do something that your client probably doesn't want you to do.
What happens when someone else find your back door and exploits it? What do you tell your client when they ask you about why there is a back door into their application?
It is quite possible that you will get sued. Aside from losing your business you will lose any integrity and should be ashamed of yourself for disrespecting your profession.
Good programmers are ethical and do what they are told.
One of the first back doors (Score:4, Interesting)
Why you never want backdoors (Score:5, Insightful)
1st, when I leave a company that I don't like or a company harms me - I consider that their "punishment" is not having the best man for the job - a backdoor would nullify this high ground and proove that I wasn't the best man for the job. And if a company is good to me, or I like them - than these are the last people in the world I would want to harm or compromize - so either way, it's just plain a poor way of living.
2nd, I don't know about you, but I worked on more than my fair share of projects where I could tell that the core was written badly, but didn't have the time, resources, or approval to do it the right way myself. There are plenty of things that could go wrong that I can get blamed for even if I do everything right, the last thing I want to do is add something else that can go wrong. No thanks!
3rd, I want denyability. When I leave a company, I want them to change the passwords, delete accounts, and for the code to be secure. The last thing I want is some breakin or failure put back on me years after the fact. There are plenty of shortcommings in life that can "catch up" with you, even if you do your darndest to be perfict. The last thing in the world I want to do is add some more to that pile.
4th, I rely on these people for contacts, reference, and refferals. Why risk burning bridges when I don't half too. Why risk a job when if I don't want it I am free to quit. If you don't like a company, why risk going to jail for them. If I must risk going to jail, I would much rather it be for a cause I believe in like that lady who refused to go to the back of the bus.
Not All Backdoors Are Nefarious (Score:5, Informative)
I was a senior software engineer at Whistle Communications, and later at IBM, for the Whistle InterJet/IBM Web Connections products. I did most of the last generation of email, user account management, mailing list, internal database, and other infrastructure services for the product.
This product has back doors. But they are all explicitly guarded.
From the front panel of the InterJet, you can enable remote management, for a short period of time. This allows a tier 1 support representative to help you configure/maintain your InterJet, while you are on the phone with them.
This required explicit customer consent for remote Web UI based administration.
From the Web UI, if you are logged in as "Admin", there are "secret URLs", which you can use to obtain raw access to the configuration database for much of the InterJet: all of the parts I personally wrote, and some of the rest of it, where the engineers used the standard APIs we had agreed upon for user interface and common configuration store code. This was done to work around the Web UI design, which failed to expose many useful features of the product, which we engineers knew would result in customers inability to use the product as it had been sold to them. It was likewise useful for tier 2 support, to avoid engineering escalations.
This required explicit customer consent for remote Web UI based administration.
Also from the front panel of the InterJet, you can enable "telnet mode". This was done by going to a particular configuration screen on the front panel, and entering a "T" (for "Telnet") on the front panel keypad at that screen. A time limited ability for a remote engineer to come in and manually access the system to diagnose and treat engineering escalations was thereby enabled.
This required explicit customer consent for remote shell based administration.
In addition, this mode only worked from a specific netblock of IP addresses.
Once in at the shell, it was possible for an engineer to force any of these protections. It was common practice for a persistant problem to leave the remote access for engineers open until the problem was verified to be resolved.
There was also a "magic" front panel sequence that would permit you to play "Pong" on the LCD display. I filed a sev-1 bug ("total loss of functionality") against the maintainer, because it did not support "Skunks" (scores of 7-0) as a victory condition. 8-).
All of them were under direct user control, in terms of outside access.
None of these are "proprietary" or "confidential", they just aren't useful to people without documentation.
Other than working around the Web UI designer's intent, with the second back door, none of these really qualifies as nefarious (I would argue that working around the Web UI designers intent qualifies as "routing around the damage").
-- Terry
Spyware (Score:4, Interesting)
My response was that I could do this, but that I thought that doing this without notfying the customer that it was being done was wrong. Stangely enough they did not argue with me, and as far as I know it has not been done.
"Test Harnesses" and non-web back-doors (Score:5, Insightful)
During the construction of a program I almost always end up writing a test harness for each significant module. Where possible I like to include the test harness inside the library for that module.
I then, when assembling the final product, do compile time control of whether the target application does, or does not, have the hooks to branch into the test harnesses. When an application ehxibits an error that doesn't have a clear source origin I switch to the "debugging version" of a product and that brings in a fully-featured set of back doors and hacks. Clearly the dubugging version is not suitable for production.
That having been said.
A certian lazyness on the part of the developers combined with a sloppy mind set being promulgated by the "I can drag and I can drop so I am a programmer" school of language-constructors, debuggers, and IDEs, has led to a plague of escaped code.
A primary example of these escapes are "cheat codes" in games. Now days, you can't even expect to sell a game at all unless it is rife with cehat codes you can include in the book. These are the "send a message to all from the console saying "I Am Rich" and you will get $100,000 credits at the start of your next (event)" things. They clearly exist so that the developers can go in and exercise the extreme limits of their design but then they are never disabled later for the production release.
This is dumb and annoying in games. In "real" applications this is potentially catostrophic.
But the "whats good for bob is goog dor ted" mentality causes the cheating haxor kiddies, who have seen these back channels as required parts of every program they have used growing up (e.g. the games) and now somehow think such things *BELONG* in code.
Any culture that teaches kids to just use the cheats (the cheat codes are even commonly printed in the manuals now, and then *explained* in detail in the walkthrough & cheat book you can buy seperately) and that any program without those cheats is probably trash, should not be surprised that when those kids enter the workforce they will, as a matter of self-pride include such things in the code they then write.
(Example: my room mate is 12 years younger than I. He can't function in a game, or at least "can't enjoy" a game, unless he has got the FAQ and walkthrough around "just in case." What has he learned from life about "working it out himself?" and what should that teach the rest of us?)
Test harnesses are necessary for development.
They should be expunged from production code.
Programmers should *know* *how* to write code that doesn't change core behavior when you take out the test harnesses.
Games and toys should not be an exception as that sets bad habbits.
===
We are all doomed...
Backdoor in College Loan management software (Score:4, Interesting)
The Ultimate Backdoor! (Score:4, Funny)
If it's a good enough programming practice for the United Federation of Planets, it's good enough for me.
This is a TRUE story. (Score:4, Interesting)
But I don't remember the guy's name. Or maybe it was a chick. But whoever it was, they were definitely a staid and steadfast compiler writer.
Mangement ASKED for a backdoor (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Code Review (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorta, the only way to guarantee is to make ALL _checked_in_code_ reviewed. This is generally not a very practical alternative in any project that has real deadlines. What happens during a "code review" (a formal one anyway). People review the code, make comments and the developer(s) go off and make whatever changes. Ooops, gotta now review the code they changed.
Re:Microsoft believes in them.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft believes in them.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft believes in them.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like you to go perform a simple experiment.
Write a "Hello World" program, where you have a static character array named "Fred" containing the string "Hello World" which you pass to printf.
Compile it.
Now, search the executable for "Hello World". You find it, right? Now search for "Fred". Funny, you get no matches. Doesn't that seem odd, considering MS's claim?
Doesn't it also seem odd that, in the context in which "NSAKey" existed, it fit perfectly in a data area containing identically-formatted key data?
read bruce schenier's column on it
Okay. Does the following quote sound familiar?
"Two, that it is actually an NSA key. If the NSA is going to use Microsoft products for classified traffic, they're going to install their own cryptography. They're not going to want to show it to anyone, not even Microsoft. They are going to want to sign their own modules. So the backup key could also be an NSA internal key, so that they could install strong cryptography on Microsoft products for their own internal use."
It would appear that Bruce did NOT claim the key only existed as a coincidence... He said it *might* result as a coincidence, or it might result from the NSA wanting to *improve* the available security for their own use (and, presumeably, to hell with the win95-using masses who fund the NSA through taxes). These do not describe the same situation.
Arguably, though, the "improved" security argument seems no less offensive to the privacy-minded. Why? Becuse, if the NSA saw a need to use super-secret-spiffy encryption for their *own* traffic, they did so due to the inherent weakness of the default crypto available (which I doubt many people would disagree with in hindsight).
So they didn't *need* a backdoor for everyone else, they needed a *lock* on the wide-open-barn-door for their own use.
Re:Open source, of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Having the source available isn't necessarily as much help as you might think. Since nobody else has mentioned it yet, I suppose I'd better do the honors and point y'all to Ken Thompson's classic talk on backdoors, Reflections on Trusting Trust [acm.org].
Highly recommended. It's a good reminder of just how devious it's possible to be.
Re:Backdoors are nice but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you feel better if it was a radio button or or slider rather than a clickable button? Also, it is about as malacious as Winamp, in that you have to allow it to phone home, and you can choose to allow it to report anonymous statistics (just like winamp). I don't see people with pitchforks calling for nullsoft's (er... AOL i guess) heads.
Doubtful. A backdoor is never needed. There's no backdoor to losing the Administrator password on an NT box, yet you can reset it with physical access. Would people be thankfull if there was one? I doubt it, you'd probably have an ape shit.
You are the epitomy of what is wrong with many developers today. You hate your users with a passion much like some land owner has towards his 'peasant' workers. Grow up, listen to your users, respect them and advise them, and with all honesty work towards middle ground.
-malakai
Re:Backdoors in the brain (Score:5, Insightful)