I assume you never worked in academia. Sometimes hpc are installed by researchers (incl myself) as there is no budget for IT staff.
Re:iTerm2 critical security release
by 0xbadcafebee on Friday January 03, 2025 @12:53PM
(#42587853)
Still not your responsibility. If they don't cough up the cash to properly manage the security, they can't expect any. Just because a trucking company doesn't want to pay for a mechanic, doesn't mean they can expect their drivers to repair blown engines.
Most of the time
- all input ports are blocked. Kinda provides security. Works fine as if things are so dire most academia would be hacked.
- these are not valuable like data from SSN or bank. So fewer attacks.
- if something gets f*ked - it gets bad name - people laugh it off. No one will get fired.
I know uni presidents that keep passwords on excel sheets. Life is like that.
Let's be honest corporate says training, retraining, testing - IT will install 3 different malware scanners and 2 AV to HOG CPU etc but some idiot will approve MFA/TOTP (okta) or like solarwinds. So everyone has their stupidity.
A competent system administrator with a knowledge of system security can easily configure a host so that when you SSH in, files you create are not given world-readable permissions by default. They can add other lock-down mechanisms that isolates all the users' files entirely. And they can simply disable all world-writeable folders like /tmp/.
So in case anyone gives you (or anyone else) a load of crap about using insecure software, ask them why their systems are so insecure.