Tag: rant

Customer Dis-Service

In general, I’m a pretty loyal person. Especially when it comes to material things. I typically find a vendor I like and stick with them. Sure, if something new and flashy comes along, I’ll take a look, but unless there’s a compelling reason to change, I’ll stick with what I have.

But sometimes a change is forced upon me. Take, for instance, this last week. I’ve been a loyal Verizon customer for … wow, about 15 years or so. Not sure I realized it had been that long. Regardless, I’ve been using Verizon’s services for a long time. I’ve been relatively happy with them, no major complaints about services being down or getting the runaround on the phone. In fact, my major gripe with them had always been their online presence which seemed to change from month to month. I’ve had repeated problems with trying to pay bills, see my services, etc. But at the end of the day, I’ve always been able to pay the bill and move on. Since that’s really the only thing I used their online service for, I was content to leave well enough alone.

In more recent months, we’ve been noticing that the 3M DSL service we had is starting to lack a bit. Not Verizon’s fault at all, but the fault of an increased strain on the system at our house. Apparently 3M isn’t nearly enough bandwidth to satisfy our online hunger. That, coupled with the price we were paying, had me looking around for other services. Verizon still doesn’t offer anything faster than 3M in the area and, unfortunately, the only other service in the area is from a company that I’d rather not do business with if I could avoid it.

In the end, I thought perhaps I could make some slight changes and at least reduce the monthly bill by a little until we determined a viable solution. I was considering adding a second DSL line, connected to a second wireless router, to relieve the tension a bit. This would allow me to avoid that other company and provide the bandwidth we needed. My wife and I could enjoy our own private upstream and place the rest of the house on the other line.

Ok, I thought, let’s dig into this a bit. First things first, I decided to get rid of the home phone, or at least transfer it to a cheaper solution. My cell provider offered a $10/month plan for home phones. Simple process, port he number over, install this little box in the house, and poof. Instant savings. Best part, that savings would be just about enough to get that second DSL line.

Being cautious, and not wanting to end up without a DSL connection, I contacted Verizon. Having worked for a telco in the past, I knew that some telcos required that you have a home phone line in order to have DSL service. This wasn’t a universal truth, however, and it was easy enough to verify. The first call to Verizon went a little sideways, though. I ended up in an automated system. Sure, everyone uses these automated systems nowadays, but I thought this one was particularly condescending. They added additional sound effects to the prompts so that when you answered a question, the automated voice would acknowledge your request and then type it in. TYPE IT IN. I don’t know why, but this drove me absolutely crazy. Knowing that I was talking to a recorded voice and then having that recorded voice playing sounds like they were typing on a keyboard? Infuriating. And, on top of it, I ended up in some ridiculous loop where I couldn’t get an operator unless I explicitly stated why I wanted an operator, but the automated system apparently couldn’t understand my request.

Ok, time out, walk away, try again later. The second time around, I lied. I ended up in sales, so it seems to have worked. I explained to the lady on the phone what I was looking for. I wanted to cancel my home phone and just keep the DSL. I also wanted to verify that I was not under contract so I wouldn’t end up with some crazy early termination fee. She explained that this was perfectly acceptable and that I could make these changes whenever I wanted. I verified again that I could keep the DSL without issue. She agreed, no problem.

Excellent! Off I went to the cell carrier, purchased (free with a contract) the new home phone box, and had them port the number. The representative cautioned that he saw DSL service listed when he was porting and suggested I contact Verizon to verify that the DSL service would be ok.

I called Verizon again to verify everything would work as intended. I explained what I had done, asked when the port would go through, and stressed that the DSL service was staying. The representative verified the port date and said that the DSL service would be fine.

You can guess where this is going, can’t you. On the day of the port, the phone line switched as expected. The new home phone worked perfectly and I made the necessary changes to the home wiring to ensure that the DSL connection was isolated away from the rest of the wiring. DSl was still up, phone ported, everything was great. Until the next morning.

I woke up the following morning and started my normal routine. Get dressed, go exercise, etc. Except that on the way to exercise, I noticed that the router light was blinking. Odd, I wonder what was going on. Perhaps something knocked the system online overnight? The DSL light on the modem was still on, so I had a connection to the DSLAM. No problem, reboot the router and we’ll be fine. So, I rebooted and walked away. After a few minutes I checked the system and noticed that I was still not able to get online. I walked through a mental checklist and decided that the username and password for the PPPoE connection must be failing. Time to call Verizon and see what’s wrong.

I contacted Verizon and first spoke to a sales rep who informed me that my services had been cancelled per my request. Wonderful. Al that work and they screw it up anyway. I explained what I had done and she took a deeper look into the account. Turns out the account was “being migrated” and she apologized for the mixup. Since I was no longer bundled, the DSL account had to be migrated. I talked with her some more about it and she decided to send me to technical support to verify everything was ok. Off I go to technical support, fully expecting them to ask be to reset my DSL modem. No such luck, however, the technical support rep explained that I had no DSL service.

And back to sales I went. I explained, AGAIN, what was going on. The representative confirmed my story, verified that the account was being migrated, and asked me to check the service again in a few hours. All told, I spent roughly an hour on the phone with Verizon and missed out on my morning exercise.

After rushing through the remainder of my morning routine and explaining to my wife why the Internet wasn’t working, I left for work. My wife checked in a few hours later to let me know that, no, we still did not have an Internet connection. So I called Verizon again. Again I’m told I have no service and that I have cancelled them. Again I explain the problem and what I had done. And this time, the representative explains to me that they do not offer unbundled DSL service anymore, they haven’t had that service in about a year. She goes on to offer me a bundled package with a phone line and explains that I don’t have to use the phone line, I just have to pay for it.

So all of the careful planning I had done was for naught. In an effort to make sure this didn’t happen to anyone else, the rep checked back on my account to see who had informed me about the DSL service. According to the notes, however, I had never called about such a thing. I called to complain about unsolicited phone calls and they referred me to their fraud and abuse office and explains about the magical phone code I could put in to block calls. Ugh! She then went on to detail every aspect of my problem, again so someone else didn’t have this problem.

This is the sort of situation that will, very rapidly, cause me to look elsewhere for service. And that’s exactly what I did. I’ve since cut all ties with Verizon and moved on to a different Internet service provider. I’m not happy with having to deal with this provider, but it’s the only alternative at the moment. Assuming I don’t have any major problems with the service, I’ll probably continue with them for a while. Of course, if I run into problems here, the decision becomes more difficult. A “lesser of two evils” situation, if you will. But for now, I’ll deal with what comes up.

Audit Insanity

<RANT>

It’s amazing, but the deeper I dive into security, the more garbage security theater I uncover. Sure, there’s insanity everywhere, but I didn’t expect to come across some of this craziness…

One of the most recent activities I’ve been party to has been the response to an independent audit. When I inquired as to the reasoning behind the audit, the answer I’ve received has been that this is a recommended yearly activity. It’s possible that this information is incorrect, but I suspect that it’s truer than I’d like to believe.

Security audits like this are standard practice all over the US and possibly the world. Businesses are led to believe that getting audited is a good thing and that they should be repeated often. My main gripe here is that while audits can be good, they need to be done for the right reasons, not just because someone tells you they’re needed. Or, even better, the audits that are forced on a company by their insurance company, or their payment processor. These sorts of audits are there to pass the blame if something bad happens.

Let’s look a little deeper. The audit I participated in was a typical security audit. An auditor contacts you with a spreadsheet full of questions for you to answer. You will, of course, answer them truthfully. Questions included inquiries about the password policy, how security policies are distributed, and how logins are handled. They delve into areas such as logging, application timeouts, IDS/IPS use, and more. It’s fairly in-depth, but ultimately just a checklist. The auditor goes through their list, interpreting your answers, and applying checkmarks where appropriate. The auditor then generates a list of items you “failed” to comply with and you have a chance to respond. This is all incorporated into a final report which is presented to whoever requested the audit.

Some audits will include a scanning piece as well. The one I’m most familiar with in this aspect is the SecurityMetrics PCI scan. Basically, you fill out a simplified yes/no questionnaire about your security and then they run a Nessus scan against whatever IP(s) you provide to them. It’s a completely brain-dead scan, too. Here’s a perfect example. I worked for a company who processed credit cards. The system they used to do this was on a private network using outbound NAT. There were both IDS and firewall systems in place. For the size of the business and the frequency of credit card transactions, this was considerable security. But, because there was a payment card processor in the mix, they were required to perform a quarterly PCI scan. The vendor of choice, SecurityMetrics.

So, the security vendor went through their checklist and requested the IP of the server. I explained that it was behind a one-way NAT and inaccessible from the outside world. They wanted the IP of the machine, which I provided to them. 10.10.10.1. Did I mention that the host in question was behind a NAT? These “security professionals” then loaded that IP into their automated scanning system. And it failed to contact the host. Go figure. Again, we went around and around until they finally said that they needed the IP of the device doing the NAT. I explained that this was a router and wouldn’t provide them with any relevant information. The answer? We don’t care, we just need something to scan. So, they scanned a router. For years. Hell, they could still be doing it for all I know. Like I said, brain dead security.

What’s wrong with a checklist, though? The problem is, it’s a list of “common” security practices not tailored to any specific company. So, for instance, the audit may require that a company uses hardware-based authentication devices in addition to standard passwords. The problem here is that this doesn’t account for non-hardware solutions. The premise here is that two-factor authentication is more secure than just a username and password. Sure, I whole-heartedly agree. But, I would argue that public key authentication provides similar security. It satisfies the “What You Have” and “What You Know” portions of two-factor authentication. But it’s not hardware! Fine, put your key on a USB stick. (No, really, don’t. That’s not very secure.)

Other examples include the standard “Password Policy” crap that I’ve been hearing for years. Basically, you should expire passwords every 90 days or so, passwords should be “strong”, and you should prevent password reuse by remembering a history of passwords. So let’s look at this a bit. Forcing password changes every 90 days results in bad password habits. The reasoning is quite simple, and there have been studies that show this. This paper (pdf) from the University of North Carolina is a good example. Another decent write up is this article from Cryptosmith. Allow me to summarize. Forcing password expiration results in people making simpler passwords, writing passwords down, or using simplistic algorithms to generate “complex” passwords. In short, cracking these “fresh” passwords is often easier than well thought out ones.

The so-called “strong” password problem can be summarized by a rather clever XKCD comic. The long and short here is that truly complex passwords that cannot be easily cracked are either horribly complex mishmashes of numbers, letters, and symbols, or they’re long strings of generic words. Seriously, “correct horse battery staple” is significantly stronger than using a completely random 11 digit string.

And, of course, password history. This sort of goes hand-in-hand with password expiration, but not always. If it’s used in conjunction with password expiration, then it generally results in single character variation in passwords. Your super-secure “complex” password of “Password1” (seriously, it meets the criteria.. Uppercase, lowercase, number) becomes a series of passwords where the 1 is changed to a 2, then 3, then 4, etc. until the history is exceeded and the user can return to 1 again. It’s easier to remember that way and the user doesn’t have to do much extra work.

So even the standard security practices on the checklist can be questioned. The real answer here is to tweak each audit to the needs of the requestor of the audit, and to properly evaluate the responses based on the security posture of the responder. There do need to be baselines, but they should be sane baselines. If you don’t get all of the checkmarks on an audit, it may not mean you’re not secure, it may just mean you’re securing your network in a way the auditor didn’t think of. There’s more to security than fancy passwords and firewalls. A lot more.

</RANT>

LOL

As I was zippin’ around the Information Superhighway today, I ran across this blog entry by Wil Wheaton. Wil is a great guy and has some interesting insights into a variety of matters both geeky and not-so-geeky. This particular post by him picked up on a pet peeve of mine that I’ve had for some time now, text-speak. Modern day devices have evolved to the point where we can communicate almost instantly via typed communications, most notably on cell phones. The reasons for using typed communication vary, but they exist and are actually pretty valid. However, it seems that as we move into more and more instant communication, our language skills are devolving. Wil’s blog entry is a perfect example of this.

I’ll admit, I’ve been known to use the odd LOL or ROFLMAO here or there, but it’s mostly in situations where those terms are almost expected. I refuse, however, to degrade myself by using shortcuts and misspelled words. It’s one thing to use the occasional acronym, but another to use cryptographic shortcuts to get your message out. Perhaps if my life was in danger, and I only had a few seconds to send a message, things would be different.

When I was in college, I spent a lot of time on IRC and playing a variety of MUDs. I have spent a good deal of time online in forums, talking on IRC and IM, playing online games, etc., and I have not devolved to the point of bad grammar in any of these situations. I think it’s a bad sign that people have decided to throw proper grammar out the window to chat with their friends.

What makes it worse is that television is popularizing the concept. AT&T runs a commercial now that pokes fun at the shorthand messaging by speaking it aloud and showing subtitles on the screen. It is quite the annoying commercial for any normal, educated person. In fact, I find it to be in quite poor taste.

Californication, a new series on Showtime, summed it up best with the following :

Radio Host: What’s your latest obsession?
Hank: Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The Internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it’s really given us is Howard Dean’s aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People…they don’t write anymore – they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.
Radio Host: Yet you’re part of the problem, I mean you’re out there blogging with the best of them.
Hank: Hence my self-loathing.