Unfiltered Story #192450

Working in tech support has its moments. Meaning that you often run into what are commonly known among techs as “India Delta” errors. India Delta being short for “India Delta ten Tango”, or idiot errors.

Most of the india delta errors are pretty simple things. Common sense situations that clients calling us should have figured out on their own. Others however…

Case in point, a couple days ago I received a call from a VERY irate woman. Her boss was trying to work from home, and was finding it very difficult to do so. For some odd reason he couldn’t call us himself, so he’d asked her to call us. In the case of password issues, we’re not allowed to do them without the actual client speaking to us.

Me: I understand he’s locked out of the computer, but rules are rules. I can’t unlock it unless I can speak directly to him.

Caller: And why not?

Me: Infosec. (Information Security.) There are rules I have to follow.

Caller: But can’t you do it this one time? He has a meeting with (Company president).

Me: If I was speaking to him, I could. Othwerise, no. I have to verify his identity, and then figure out why he got locked. All that takes at most ten minutes, so he’s not out much and I can have him connected before the required meeting.

Caller: Oh I know why he got locked out. Does that help?

Me: Not really, any number of things can…

Caller: He gave me his password, and I typed it in wrong. It’s (password) can you unlock it now?

Me: I’m sorry, I have to end this call.

With that I hung up, popped into my password tool and quickly changed his password to “InfosecBreach” and then pinged my boss. I tell him everything, and he tells me to quote ‘kick the guy off his PC, and lock him out of EVERYTHING.’ He then tells the rest of the tech team to not change any passwords for this guy, as we’ve had a major infosec breach.

So I head out to fill out all the paperwork for the breach, end up in a call with the head of information security, and think nothing of it.

Couple hours later, a call comes through. While I don’t take it, I do hear about it when I come back from lunch.

Not long after I crashed the guy’s computer, and locked him out of everything, his assistant called back and was livid. She wanted to know why he had been kicked out of everything, adding to that agent that she’d been trying his password again and nothing was working. So, Infosec ends up with a second call, and second set of papers.

So what ended up happening to the guy? Well, he and his assistant were fired outright. The guy had something like ten years with the company, and had managed one of the main branch offices. The Assistant had been with him for five years, and admitted to infosec that he always gave her his passwords, since he didn’t like coming in early and it was quote ‘easier’ for him to have her do the morning work, as opposed to that branch having to wait till he came in.

Moral of the story:

Don’t be an idiot and keep your passwords private.