this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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One chestnut from my history in lottery game development:

While our security staff was incredibly tight and did a generally good job, oftentimes levels of paranoia were off the charts.

Once they went around hot gluing shut all of the "unnecessary" USB ports in our PCs under the premise of mitigating data theft via thumb drive, while ignoring that we were all Internet-connected and VPNs are a thing, also that every machine had a RW optical drive.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And that's why people use mouse jigglers and keep their computers unlocked 24/7.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Mine was removed by Corporate IT, along with a bunch of other open source stuff that made my life bearable.

Also I spent 5 months with our cyber security guys to try and provide a simple file replication server for my team working in a remote office with shit internet connectivity. I gave up, the spooks put up a solid defense, push all the onerous IT security compliance checking onto my desk instead of taking control.

Not as bad as my previous company though, outsourced IT support to ATOS was a nightmare.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's reasonably easy to make a hardware mouse wiggler with an Arduino Micro (and I don't mean something that physically moves a mouse, rather something that looks like a USB mouse to the computer and periodically sends mouse movement messages).

If you're desperate enough, look it up as it's quite simple so there should be step by step instructions out there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Absolutely love my Uno keyboard for this https://keyhive.xyz/shop/uno-single-key-keyboard

Got like 6 commands on a single key and one of them is to press shift every 30seconds so my computer doesn’t lock. Lifesaver.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, it's surprisingly simple to get these microcontrollers to become essentially programmable keyboard/mouse emulators, by which point if you're familiar with the stuff to program them (Arduino being the simplest and most widespread framework) it really just becomes a coding task and you can get it to do crazy stuff.

I suggested an Arduino Micro board because it bypasses the whole hardware side of the problem, but something like what you mention is even simpler.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I used a Sidewinder keyboard for years with programmable macros.

Yeah, I had my password as a macro.

Dick move on my part as the macro, I'm fairly sure, is stored in plaintext on the PC. But the convenience was great. I don't do that any more.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Can also just buy one from Amazon if you’re lazy or not technically inclined.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Well, my off the cuff suggestion was what seems simple to me in this domain ;)

That said I get what you mean and agree.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's why you buy a jiggler that you place your mouse onto. Not detectable by IT :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

After mine was disabled, I found that if I run videos of old meetings or training onscreen, it keeps the system alive...

Works nicely when I'm WFH.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I set my pocket knife on the ctrl key when I have to step away.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Ahhh the old "level up an RPG Skill by jamming a pen cap into a key and going to watch Night Court reruns" method.

Thanks, I actually didn't know holding CTRL would keep the system awake!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does that keep your status in Teams as "online"? That's what I use the jiggler for - if I'm waiting for CI tests which take 30+ minutes and I sit in front of the laptop, I don't want to have to manually jiggle my mouse every couple of minutes just to keep my status.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Awesome, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Idk about every application but it keeps windows from timing out which serves most purposes for me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The internal IT at that hellhole is a nightmare as well.