Good morning, y'all. What's the biggest "oh shit" moment you've had, preferably early in your career when you didn't realize that this kind of thing happens all the time.
I'm specifically interested in #InfoSec, but other areas can feel fee to reply if they wish.
I was just a few years into my career in Information Security when this happened. I was "that person who knew Perl and liked regex" and I was tasked with building a poor man's IAM as a proof-of-concept.
I was not a developer.
I have never been a developer.
They needed something that could snarf a file from HR, munge it, and then shove the results into AD.
It created new users and updated existing users. I wasn't really comfortable deleting users with it.
One day, there was a strange bug where the email address field didn't come through. When the script ran overnight it overwrote the email address of 6,000 users with the value of "nul". They could not get email. Nobody could. I walked into my little lab area and was just sitting there with my head in my hands.
I was certain I was getting fired.
The AD admin team reached out to me to let me know they were restoring a full backup they'd done two days before.
He restored the backup in less than an hour and everything was back to normal.
I still expected to get fired.
Instead, within two weeks, they had transferred the process to actual developers like they should have done in the first place.
Within another two years, the homemade kludge was being replaced by an actual commercial solution because no human being should have to write switch / case statements to handle every possible variation of how names might be capitalized or spelled or how "Jr." or "III" or two middle initials, or no middle initial might be presented in a giant CSV of strings.
Anyway, what's the thing that happened to you to let you know what sometimes, "shit happens" and it's not the end of the world? That you work on a team and it's just part of the job to come together, fix it, and move on?
There's even a Change Management category for it: Break / Fix.
#OhShit #IAM #Exchange #AD
J. R. DePriest :verified_trans: :donor: (she / her) :EA DATA. SF: /
npub1jj…s6pms
2023-09-14 14:49:34
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npub1jj8z2u2wlvclrg2fcf3xtpxak0u75efe3lkax7egh8tkfedzu03qfs6pmsPublished at
2023-09-14 14:49:34Event JSON
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"content": "Good morning, y'all. What's the biggest \"oh shit\" moment you've had, preferably early in your career when you didn't realize that this kind of thing happens all the time.\nI'm specifically interested in #InfoSec, but other areas can feel fee to reply if they wish.\n\nI was just a few years into my career in Information Security when this happened. I was \"that person who knew Perl and liked regex\" and I was tasked with building a poor man's IAM as a proof-of-concept.\nI was not a developer.\nI have never been a developer.\nThey needed something that could snarf a file from HR, munge it, and then shove the results into AD.\nIt created new users and updated existing users. I wasn't really comfortable deleting users with it.\nOne day, there was a strange bug where the email address field didn't come through. When the script ran overnight it overwrote the email address of 6,000 users with the value of \"nul\". They could not get email. Nobody could. I walked into my little lab area and was just sitting there with my head in my hands.\nI was certain I was getting fired.\nThe AD admin team reached out to me to let me know they were restoring a full backup they'd done two days before.\nHe restored the backup in less than an hour and everything was back to normal.\nI still expected to get fired.\nInstead, within two weeks, they had transferred the process to actual developers like they should have done in the first place.\nWithin another two years, the homemade kludge was being replaced by an actual commercial solution because no human being should have to write switch / case statements to handle every possible variation of how names might be capitalized or spelled or how \"Jr.\" or \"III\" or two middle initials, or no middle initial might be presented in a giant CSV of strings.\n\nAnyway, what's the thing that happened to you to let you know what sometimes, \"shit happens\" and it's not the end of the world? That you work on a team and it's just part of the job to come together, fix it, and move on?\nThere's even a Change Management category for it: Break / Fix.\n\n#OhShit #IAM #Exchange #AD",
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