You know what's allowed or not when you are hired. It's gone over. And several people lost their jobs over it. It was a high security network. I can't really say any more than that, except it was government position.

Man some of you people are so dramatic...

Not every company treats its employees like a concentration camp.

Getting someone escorted out with security for plugging in a USB?

On one hand yes, it's a security risk. On the other hand - I wouldn't want to work in a company like that.

Now, screen and keystroke recording? Unless it's the armed forces, police or other some sort of national security or public service, in Europe that is illegal even on work computers.

Actually it's this kind of crap that made me leave the 9-5 workforce lifestyle entirely. It's difficult to be a freelancer but I don't need to shiver in fear if I sneeze and accidentally type 'screw <company>'.

Funny tho how at odds these responses are with the other suggestions to boot from USB. Pretty sure THAT would be impossible on almost any work computer. And even if it was, then there's no quick way to quit the game and get back to looking like one's working.

Anyway as for the OP, apparently only at your risk but yea DOSBox games are pretty portable. You need to check the configuration files to make sure everything stays in one directory tho.

I think you may have missed the bit where they said boot off the pen drive. They're talking about running a different operating system... the surveillance stuff would have to be hardware based to continue working in the situation.
Of course this would be moot at a lot of places, because they should be using a password in the BIOS to limit USB booting.

There's a good chance booting from external devices is disabled and the CMOS is password protected. Barring that, though, they can't (not that easily, at least).

I guess some places lock them down tight. In which case it'll be easier to just bring your own computer for those DOS games.

Meanwhile I'm in a position to flash the firmware on all my seven work computers.. but of course that'd be a pointless exercise (except when I need to do it), since I tend to have my own laptop with me too. All hooked up to my own managed switch, with a sniffer.. :)

I was asking more in general but that's understandable in such cases.

I also got a job offer at such a place..

You'd always have at least two computers; one is for browsing, connected to the internet. The other is either airgapped or intranet-only and used for the real work.

Interesting info, but I was asking more if businesses in general would fire over a mistake/one time thing like plugging in a usb peripheral without knowing it specifically is forbidden.

BTW, those airgapped PCs had their wireless disabled or wireless cards/etc removed? I am assuming they did one/both of them.

I didn't ask about that, and I didn't take the job. I also never got to fondle those machines in person, 'cause we had the onsite interview in the cafetaria where you can get in with just an escort & visitor clearance..

Probably wireless cards removed entirely.

What kind of mechanism do you use for identifying a device? As far as I remember, the USB spec makes no such accommodations. There's the device descriptor which is pretty much all you have for identifying a device, and it provides no security.

Airgapped means there is no connection. Your only choice for transferring data is sneakernet, if even that, or entering it manually. The term was coined long before wireless networking became common (or was even viable), and most likely didn't refer to computers at all, but electrical wires (having a wide enough air gap means shorts/connections don't happen, if the gap is too small, a spark may cause a short).

A wireless connection is still a connection, and as such a device with a wireless connection is not airgapped.

There was software installed on certified devices. Beyond that, I really can't say. I wasn't the engineer, and I don't think I can say more legally. Sure it could probably be beaten, but ultimately, 99% of our users weren't savvy enough, and the rest didn't want to risk it.

It strongly depends on type of games. If it was me, I would've install a lightweight linux distro on portable drive and play all games from it instead of main os. But it will require reboot - thus, as far as I've understood, wont suit your desires

My bad.....I thought youi worked for such a company/knew it personally the answer to my question from experience. Thanks for the reply though. :)



Thanks for the info/background on such terminology. It is welcomed.

Aside: Sneakernet...that reminds me of the film Sneakers.