Where is the problem? There is no problem!
Recently, I've been involved in a software development project. I'm standing on the consumer's side, represent our department. The company, which is doing the deployment right now, is one of the biggest Chinese software provider (at least this is how they promote themselves). I don't want to know how the got this project, but rumor said their chief had a long relationship with our THE ONE WHO CHARGES which could be traced back to their college period. Since I am the sys admin of our department, I have to really be careful to this product: which will be maintained solely by myself.
But:
When I saw the system, the first impression was, they totally ignored the requirements. Then, after spending a bit of time digging in to the system, I found many links which led to other universities' website. Aha, that's the "original product" dedicated for us! (I'm not against reusing resources, but at least please clean the mess up...) 10 minutes later, I found a backdoor. I believe it lays there for testing and debugging purpose, but it should never happen in the deployment phase. The biggest surprise came after. The similar backdoors existed everywhere across other systems they developed for our university. (Some backgrounds here: They made several systems for other departments of our university, and a portal to bring all systems together, about a year ago. I never paid much attention to this portal, partially because I think it's too primitive, and partially because the admins of the subsystems never add me to their authorized lists, no matter how many emails I sent to them to ask for authorization . After tons of emails I gave up.) I could have the superuser privilege to do anything I wanna do.
Then I totally got lost. I had no idea what had happened...
During the development phase, or even earlier, we had quite bad experiences with this company. Now, as things evolved, I began to think, did they really care about the users' experience, or they just wanna get the projects done, grab the money and run away... I know my idea is too critical...
Suddenly I...(to be continued...)




<< Home