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Does your company include security back-doors in its software?   [Edit]

Survey period: 1 Aug 2005 to 7 Aug 2005

In light of the recent WGA "by-pass switch" slip-up by Microsoft, does your company include security overrides (by-pass) in its software? (suggested by Doug Troy)

OptionVotes% 
Yes and everyone that works here knows about them.394.73
Yes, but only the IT dept. knows what they are (we hope)364.36
Yes, but only a select few know about them.10612.85
No (unless you count the one I put in)15318.55
No. We don't want the headaches49159.52



 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Vikram A Punathambekar1-Aug-05 17:17
Vikram A Punathambekar1-Aug-05 17:17 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe3-Aug-05 4:10
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe3-Aug-05 4:10 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
peterchen4-Aug-05 4:40
peterchen4-Aug-05 4:40 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe4-Aug-05 8:30
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe4-Aug-05 8:30 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Almighty Bob1-Aug-05 16:50
Almighty Bob1-Aug-05 16:50 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Mike Dimmick3-Aug-05 0:54
Mike Dimmick3-Aug-05 0:54 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Fred Kreppert3-Aug-05 8:19
Fred Kreppert3-Aug-05 8:19 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Troberg4-Aug-05 21:39
Troberg4-Aug-05 21:39 
We make systems run in a low risk environment by few users, and we know our customers well enough to recognize them over the phone.

Our login is not made as a heavy duty intruder protection, it is just meant as a way to keep curious co-workers out so they don't mess something up through mistakes.

Sometimes our users forget the password and call us. To solve this, we have made a program that, based on the system clock, generates a password that the program will accept for a full hour. An hour later, the password is old and unusable. This way, we can let them logon to change their password without trouble, and security is not dramatically compromised.

This is also a neat way for us to work when we support customer on site or if they send a copy of their system to us, since it allows us to login without them having to reveal their password (which they no doubt use in a bunch of other places).

Of course, only we have the super password generating program, and we keep it tightly secured.

The customers are aware of this possibility, so technically it's a borderline case of a backdoor. So far, no customer has disapproved, in fact they consider it very useful and they feel safer knowing that even if they screw up really bad, we can get them back in. In fact, it is probably the most popular non application specific feature in our programs apart from the cute animated login screen.
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Kacee Giger5-Aug-05 5:08
Kacee Giger5-Aug-05 5:08 
GeneralRe: Alright, what did YOU put in? Pin
Jeff J7-Aug-05 12:13
Jeff J7-Aug-05 12:13 

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