Why support may ask for your backup.nems file, and why you should never share it with others

During support sessions I often request either SSH access or a copy of the user’s backup.nems file. SSH access, it should be obvious, should not be shared with just anyone. Also, you should never, ever, ever, open SSH to the world on your NEMS server if you have not yet initialized it. This is because there are botnets that look for Raspberry Pi computers which use the default “raspberry” password, and then compromize them.

SSH aside, as it is pretty obvious why it is sometimes the best way for me to provide support, I wanted to document why I may ask for your backup.nems file, what this file tells me, and why you should not just send it to anyone offering to help.

Your backup.nems file contains your complete NEMS configuration including those for your Nagios hosts, services, and your plain text resource.cfg file. This file contains your SMTP credentials which can be used by me to help diagnose email notification problems, but could also be used by a malicious user to compromize the mail account. This file also contains the administrator login information for your Windows machines, as entered by you. This too can be used by me to help diagnose an issue with hosts not responding, but can also be used by a malicious user to compromize your systems, should this information get into the wrong hands.

All this to say, store your backup.nems file as you would any other unencrypted backup set. It contains private information which is very helpful in diagnosing and helping resolve issues, but should be treated as a very confidential file.

Please do not share your backup.nems file with third parties unless you are certain you can trust them. If you have any questions related to this document, please comment below.

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