The equivalent of what I was describing in terms of a web experience would be having to use a dialup modem to sign up for an account via Netscape Navigator 4. With a login secured using SSL… version 1.0.
I wish I was exaggerating, but their systems literally date back to that era and have comparable limitations in terms of supported network protocols.
When I left, the mobile division had its customers split between three different systems; GSMIS, Focus and Arbor. The poor customer service reps would have no idea which one any given user was in when the phone rang. The only way to figure it out was to ask the person for their phone number, then type that number into each backend and see which one returned a result.
the 100,000’s of open management ports is pretty lol
Unsurprisingly, you're were absolutely correct.
"An early investigation suggests hackers were able to breach Optus through a test network"
'Human error' emerges as factor in Optus hack affecting millions of Australians https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-23/optus-hack-likely-res...
There was a court-enforced order requiring them to apply security updates to their production systems. That was in response to a previous breach.
You see, until a judge made them do it… they weren’t patching anything. They would just build systems and walk away. For some software systems they had every major and minor version deployed, like a museum of software history.
They had operating system versions in production that were in my university text books… in the late 1990s.
Their interpretation of the court order was to update only production systems. Non-production on the same network was not to be touched.
And by “update” they meant simply running the system update tool, which does precisely nothing on software that has passed its end-of-extended-support before some of the IT staff on the payroll were born.
They also fired their entire IT staff recently and replaced them with a low-cost Indian outsourcer.
Most of the above is a matter of public record. I wish I could tell you all about things that are still under NDA.