About the recent server compromise

[sbogovac]

No, it is not. What would happen if theymos actually forgot his password and they couldn't reset it?
You can't prevent social engineering, no matter what you do.

LOL! A server admin needs a mommy to reset his password for him? I'm sorry, but if you can't keep your root password safe, you don't deserve to be a server admin. No one ever needs to know the root passwords to my servers. No one. Ever.

So servers should die with their admins?

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[Xian01]

No one ever needs to know the root passwords to my servers. No one. Ever.

To be fair, my wife knows the root passwords on all my machines/servers incase I face an untimely death.

[2112]

So servers should die with their admins?

Ha, ha!  I like it!

But seriously, the normal course of action is to terminate sysadmins who are incapable of producing the proper credentials to the equipment they manage. "Termination" doesn't mean "killing", just "firing from employment 'for cause'".

There was an really interesting case of a network sysadmin for San Francisco municipial government that went insane (schizophrenia/paranoia) and refused to disclose passwords to the Cisco equipment which he was supervising. Sorry, I don't have a link handy.

[sbogovac]

So servers should die with their admins?

Ha, ha!  I like it!

But seriously, the normal course of action is to terminate sysadmins who are incapable of producing the proper credentials to the equipment they manage. "Termination" doesn't mean "killing", just "firing from employment 'for cause'".

There was an really interesting case of a network sysadmin for San Francisco municipial government that went insane (schizophrenia/paranoia) and refused to disclose passwords to the Cisco equipment which he was supervising. Sorry, I don't have a link handy.

Hehehe, but I meant it literally too...

What if an admin dies? Should access to the servers die with him?

I would argue: no. So - in addition to your "mental illness" example - there are definitely reasons why several people should always know the root passwords to any servers (except of those which are so personal they actually should "die with their admins"... obviously...).

[mmortal03]

No one ever needs to know the root passwords to my servers. No one. Ever.

To be fair, my wife knows the root passwords on all my machines/servers incase I face an untimely death.

No mommy needed, just a wifey.

[2112]

What if an admin dies? Should access to the servers die with him?

Every organization I've seen has disaster recovery procedures. Just follow them. The comments I made earlier about "terminating sysadmins" pertain to terminating those who don't follow them for one reason or the other. It really isn't a computer-science-specific problem, more like general organizational management problem.

With one man shops (like bitcointalk.org) the situation is simplified. Loss of access requires disassembly of the server to reset its password protections. If there was encryption in use, those data are (most likely) irretrievably lost and the server requires reinstallation with the fresh software. The reset/reimage is not something that can be done quickly, surreptitiously or socially-engineered into the normal workflow of the customer service of the data center. I've never heard of anyone successfully performing such an attack, but I've heard of performing similar attack where the goal wasn't to steal the data but to steal the hardware.

I personally wouldn't bother thinking much about it. In all cases that I've seen/experienced the password loss was temporary, i.e. the person recalled/found the proper password after giving it some time. The true loss happened only if there wasn't anything important on the server anyways.

The real, practical danger with one-man shops is not the password loss, but grave mistakes, that corrupt the data on the server without getting noticed.

[Syke]

So servers should die with their admins?

My servers are of a personal nature, so yes, I'd rather have the servers die with me than be hacked. For an organization, root passwords can be stored in a secure location, and known by a select few admins. I can see no reason ever for an ISP to have root access (unless of course it's a server with no real value).

I've worked with DoD facilities. They would never pass root passwords to upstream ISPs.

[2112]

I've worked with DoD facilities. They would never pass root passwords to upstream ISPs.

I'm more of a small/middle-business person, so I can better understand the issues faced by small shops renting space in the data center cages.

How does the above DoD example compare with a personal web site for a porn-star/ex-model? How come a woman with incomplete high-school education can be astute enough to understand the issues of who can have access to database of her customers? Granted, she was about 40 y.o. at that time, but certainly wasn't a rocket-science intellect.