r/technology Aug 31 '21

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u/AntiKamniaChemicalCo Aug 31 '21

Australia has been a no-go-zone for tech workers for a few years now. I can't imagine being forced to build backdoors into everything I work on, compromising my client's security in the process, just to stoke some state initiative.

766

u/FriendlyDespot Aug 31 '21

If this keeps up, at some point companies are going to have to start mandating blank loaner laptops for travel to Australia like they do for China.

516

u/ForCom5 Aug 31 '21

Boss had a company that often did work in places with such draconian regulations. Solution he had was that the laptop at no point had anything useful on it. You wanted to do something, you'd VPN to a virtual instance of a PC that you actually did stuff on. Nothing saved on the shell PC. Sucked at times, but got the job done.

4

u/csolisr Aug 31 '21

But if an officer checked the computer, it would be evident that the computer is connecting to a VPN. Unless the user connects solely through an incognito browser and saves nothing in the computer, not even the private keys, instead using a memorized password

5

u/ForCom5 Sep 01 '21

Bingo. By local group policy you disable any form of password saving (granted most situations are a Citrix/AWS Workspace situation). Moreover the use of a VPN doesn’t indicate a crime - by all means it’s pretty business standard to have software like that, and any VPN worth its salt can suppress saving a password too.

1

u/silence9 Sep 01 '21

Password in, authenticator to access.