• bvs23bkv33 (unregistered)

    i thought story is about Pottering

  • (nodebb)

    TRWTF is that Michael Bolton could fill a 20 greatest songs list.

  • nate (unregistered)

    @bvs23bkv33: Poettering was also my first thought, but he ain't exactly old. (Which is probably part of the problem ... if he was old and wise, he wouldn't do what he does ;)

  • bvs23bkv33 (unregistered) in reply to nate

    described Lennart was not quite wise too

  • Free Bird (unregistered)

    Old Lennart would have no problem surviving a visit from the Bobs.

  • MiserableOldGit (unregistered)

    I worked in a place where the IT support mangler really did not know how to install or configure an OS. He had a ghost image taken from a client PC in one of the call centres which, although a horrid unstable migration from ME to XP, kind of worked, I think he must have got someone in to look at that one.

    The whole business, from reception to database server, was running boxes that had started with this clone and then had anything else slapped on the top. You can imagine that most of every day was spent battling IP conflicts, blue screens, buggered drivers and the bizarre phenomena that get thrown up with utterly corrupt registries battered into life with hacky tools and no actual intelligence.

    I thought that would be the WTF here rather than a slightly wonky teamviewer incident. From memory teamviewer would self correct that particular ID collision thing, in a later life we were using cloned VMs a lot and supporting them with Teamviewer without much trouble, and that certainly should cause the same issue.

  • Drone (unregistered)

    Anyone else find it weird that the install ID is randomized at install and not hardware ID-based? Seems like this would be a common problem.

  • Klimax (unregistered)

    I wonder how many readers could read text in image. (It's in Czech :) ) Found that funny.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Klimax

    I wonder how many readers could read text in image. (It's in Czech :) ) Found that funny.

    Yes, I had real trouble making sense of terms like “klient” and “SSH tunel”.

  • topin89 (unregistered) in reply to Klimax

    Well, reading was easy, but I needed to google what "ducker" actually meant.

  • (nodebb)

    The article's illustration seems to be showing how vulnerable (or invulnerable) TeamViewer is to an attacker (útočník). There are quite a few fairly recent stories in the press about the former, and this is why our institution now blocks its user.

  • Gabe Lewis (unregistered) in reply to Drone

    I'm guessing if he sysprepped it and did it normally it would work. But I'm guessing the implication here is he just said a fresh install, cloned it and then shoved it out on each computer. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't even change the hostnames.

    From their support: "Installing TeamViewer before you create a Windows image can often cause problems. The only correct and supported way to include TeamViewer in a cloned Windows image is to run Microsoft’s “sysprep” tool on the image before deploying it. This is described in Microsoft’s article Sysprep (Generalize) a Windows installation. Using the sysprep command ensures that TeamViewer works fine on cloned systems."

  • Anon (unregistered)

    TRWTFs:

    • Using TeamViewer
    • Using a static session key. Sure you wouldn't be able to remote in without a user present but that's why you have local admin.
    • Firing your only local admin with no backup.

    Remote support is great but if you have nothing local how do you handle things like desktop rollouts or hardware problems?

  • o11c (unregistered) in reply to Drone

    There are problems with hardware-based solution - what if you replace one piece of hardware at a time, until none of the original hardware is left?

    Instead, simply randomize /etc/machine-id as the first step after a clone.

  • (nodebb) in reply to o11c

    Write a startup script for stuff like that (and then removes itself) and install it in the image.

  • (nodebb)

    TRWTF is that nobody (since this had apparently been going on for a while) ever thought to ask "why isn't my activity showing at the other end?" and dig into that before proceeding. I guess it's understandable that "lag" might be the initial diagnosis for "user at the other end can't see the mouse moving", but follow that up with a test of opening a window or something, because "not connected to the right computer" is both something that should be high on the list of potential causes of that symptom, and something that's pretty important to resolve correctly before you continue.

  • RLB (unregistered) in reply to Scarlet_Manuka

    Then again, how often would they use Teamviewer? If I read the story correctly, only when Gustav himself needs to assist one of their users remotely. This could've been the first time that happened after the reinstall.

  • (nodebb) in reply to RLB

    Nope:

    "Oh, that's just Old Lennart throwing a fit. He's our cranky old Vice President. He's super pissed because Roger keeps hacking his computer and messing around on it."

  • WTFGuy (unregistered)

    Depending on what else "Rgoer" cloned there could be a lot of other fun screw-ups in here. e.g. machine SIDs.

  • Gabe Lewis (unregistered) in reply to WTFGuy

    According to TV, this shouldn't happen if they've been properly sysprepped. My guess is he finished setting up the computer to be ready for an end user to just use and then cloned it. It wouldn't surprise me if he didn't even change the hostnames.

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