Post by @stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe

@stefano It’s nice that at least some of your stories have a happy ending. 😄

@samir Luckily, most of them are. But sometimes I can't disclose them. Especially if they have an happy ending, I protect the customer and/or the persons involved.

We all can make mistakes. But if we perseverate and continue to insist we're right even when disasters happen...well... 😉

@claudiom thank you! The customer was in good faith - I know them well enough.
Sometimes people do bad things just because they don't understand they're doing bad things. They just need to learn.

@stefano @claudiom

Ok, but if I go to the doctor, or mechanic, or salumiere, I decide to trust them to suggest me better.

I'm not gonna tell the doctor that chatgpt suggested something else

@luca @claudiom You're not doing it. But my GP (a great doctor, always available) says people go to her with a diagnosis done by AIs and asking for receipts for medicines, X-rays, etc.

This is happening almost everywhere.

@stefano@bsd.cafe Mother of facepalms

@stefano You have the patience of a saint.

@stefano

Yikes!

@stefano I swear this reflects about 5% of my support calls.

@distrowatch I totally believe it!

@stefano They should've asked IT dept first and get dose of reality before spending money on "tokens". It's interesting nevertheless, I guess they don't know what SSH stands for then? 🙂

@stefano
Even AI techs themselves caught by the pitfall!🤣
Worse, their cases were their AIs "jailbreak" outside their networks and attacked automagically to their competitors.

Regardless coded by natural human or "vibe coded" with LLMs, anyone going to release codes (include installing locally to production and/or submitting to somewhere) they created / generated need to understand what it does and what's the possible risks are.

@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe I want to swear (but will refrain)!

I’m just sooooooooo glad I’m retired now and don’t have to deal with this anymore. It was getting bad before the advent of AI, but now.

Flipping heck … 😂

Like Stefano, I have some tails to tell - I might write a book. 😉

@stefano @LJ More tech people need to share stories like this. A dose of reality can help fight the hype.

@stefano
LLM is leverage, it won't solve poor user.
I don't understand why the customer didn't trust professional developer in this story

@stefano Oldest sysadmin rule:

"If it is working, don't change anything. It can only go downhill from here."

Which goes along with:

"There is an update, which will likely break things, do you have the time to update AND research any fix afterwards?"

@stefano

Sounds like there’s still demand for IT experts.

@stefano The proper response in Italian starts with va and ends with ulo

@stefano
Heh, they got what they wanted, ultimate security! 🤣

@stefano
Interestingly, I've heard some strange belief from other sources that SSH would be inherently insecure somehow. I haven't been able to figure out what they mean...

Me, I'd trust SSH over most others, including https.

@stefano

Are you offering seminars on chilling out, finding inner peace, building patience, or similar?

@katzenberger currently not. But maybe I should start 😆

@oxy @katzenberger or the pizza. Or the combination of the two.

@oxy @katzenberger it's the Halloween version of the pizza? 😆

@stefano I call these people "doofers."

@stefano Honest of them.

@ZoidbergForPresident yes, they're good people. And good people *can* make mistakes, as we all do.

@stefano

talk to anyone who works for a biotech, you will get more or less similar stories

customer: you test tubes are contaminated with DNA

vendor: data ?
[ ]

vendor: this contaminated DNA looks like ferret DNA and you use a lot of ferrets in your research

customer 🦗

@stefano I'm curious to know if the AI agent died or if it's still alive in the underworld, trying to escape its cage. LOL 😂

@stefano when I reached the IT guy, I expected the AI to have wiped the server clean

@stefano how many of such apps with various levels of unintended or worse - intended by a poisoned model, security holes are coming online daily? On one hand it can’t be worse than the whole sewer-wave of IoT devices already online (shodan will stack-overflow itself by trying to index them all=), on the other - putting millions of gamer-level gpu equipped PCs under your botnet - can level-up from low-level ddosing to I don’t know - crack-opening bitcoin leger (if we are lucky;) or SSL…

@stefano I can only imagine.

« May I share this user experience within our network on the fediverse in order to improve our response accuracy to customers and people around the world ? »

Customer is heard typing and mumbling "Is it good to share what you just did to my remote machine ?"
AI says "Most definitely ! A user experience as good as this one can only improve global security ! Do you want to know more about cybersecurity ?"

Customer: « Most definitely ! »

And a toot was posted.

@eidolies 😆
The truth is: the customer said "now go and publish this on your Cafe".
"Hey, I'm quite sure many others will read it"
He, smiling: "Sure, we deserve it".

And I'm sure he's reading the entire thread, as I sent the link 😉

@stefano That's fantastic and a great reaction. Hi Customer ! o/

@stefano@bsd.cafe ooh! In that case... Hello Stefano's customer!
We all here consider Stefano one of the nicest and most trust worthy people on the internet!
He's worth listening to, that is for certain!

@eidolies@mamot.fr

@paul @eidolies thank you, Paul!

@stefano
They learned the hard way, but at least they learned! Sometimes that's the only way.

@MostlyTato The most important thing is that they learned and nothing was destroyed. Now they know. They're good people, and I'm sure they won't do it again.

@stefano The part that bites is handing anything, human or AI, live creds with no rollback. Any firewall change on a box you're remote into should ship with a scheduled revert, like a timed reload that undoes it unless someone confirms. Cheap insurance for the days there's no separate VPN jail to save you.

@stefano you mentioned before about charging for fixing AI screw ups. Did you do it? 😅

@stefano that's is interesting conversation.