Our Sonicwall Pro 300 firewall appliance includes a diagnostic tool called "Tech Support Report", which dumps the current configuration info to a plain text file. I have been asked by Sonicwall personnel to email this file as an attachment during several tech. support calls, without any additional warning or explanation. One of the items included in the report is a plain-text copy of the Shared Secret used for authenticating VPN users. Unless everything I've read about protecting this kind of information is suddenly not true, sending unprotected shared secrets to anyone via email is very bad idea. I also doubt that tech. support personnel need this in most cases and, if they do, the customer should be notified and asked for it explicitly.
Our Sonicwall Pro 300 firewall appliance includes a diagnostic tool called "Tech Support Report", which dumps the current configuration info to a plain text file. I have been asked by Sonicwall personnel to email this file as an attachment during several tech. support calls, without any additional warning or explanation. One of the items included in the report is a plain-text copy of the Shared Secret used for authenticating VPN users. Unless everything I've read about protecting this kind of information is suddenly not true, sending unprotected shared secrets to anyone via email is very bad idea. I also doubt that tech. support personnel need this in most cases and, if they do, the customer should be notified and asked for it explicitly.
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