Re: Securing Development in a production environment

On 2007-08-30 Anthony Cogan wrote:
> We have a number of issues over the past year where developers were
> running FTP servers, anonymous file shares (with confidential data
> and no ACL's) and other very insecure methods.
>
> Their workstations are in the process of being replaced and are being
> provided a locked down (least privilege user) environment.  A small
> vocal group says they can not work this way and MUST have local
> administrative rights to their box.

They're right. Developers should have local admin privileges on their
workstations. Their workstations, however, should be placed in a
separate network segment with NO access whatsoever to the production
network.

> They have been provided virtual  machines running W2k03 Server joined
> to our production domain (yeah, I said that right).

Bad idea. Really, REALLY bad idea. Don't do it. Developers should be
provided a testing environment that resembles your production
environment closely enough, but never EVER mix development and
production environment.

Regards
Ansgar Wiechers
-- 
"All vulnerabilities deserve a public fear period prior to patches
becoming available."
--Jason Coombs on Bugtraq