Task Status showing as being changed by an employee who no longer has an account in the system

[James Worthan]

Hello all, 

I am hoping someone might have suggestions as to why this might have happened, but we recently saw some changes to tasks that had been closed for 2 years. In two cases, the users that were referenced as making the changes no longer exist within our Jira account. Their accounts were deactivated months or years ago. In another instance, the task is showing as being changed by "Anonymous". The final instance shows a current user updating a task status, but that user confirms that they did not make any changes to the task, as the project has been closed and we no longer work on the application to which it relates.

We do not currently have any integrations into our Jira Service Management that would allow a task to be updated from another application, so we are a bit perplexed as to how this may have happened. Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you in advance

[Bailey Hecksel · Accepted solution]

Hmmm, what kind of changes are you talking about?

I'm speculating, but based on my past experience you might be running into an issue with people who don't have access/permissions somehow updating these issues, and in that case, Jira is defaulting back to who does have access or that user is tied to that account in some way.

Are the updates from an account that is suspended or active?

[James Worthan]

Thank you for your reply, Bailey - 

To outline the changes that we are seeing:

Ticket 1 (Originally Closed on Feb 20, 2020): Shows being updated from Closed -> In Progress by a current user, who states that they made no changes to the ticket. Additional changes were then made 4 days ago, updating the Resolution from "Done" to "None" by "Anonymous User".

Ticket 2 (Originally marked Done on January 4, 2021): Shows being update from Done -> In progress by a former user no longer at the company and whose account was removed.

Ticket 3 (Originally marked Done on September 12, 2017): Status changed from Done -> In Progress by "Anonymous User".

3 more tickets all showing Status changes from Done to In Progress by "Anonymous User". 

These moves all happened 4 days ago on tickets that had been closed for years, so there was some concern about what might be going on. 

[Bailey Hecksel]

James, can you check the Automation rule executions section in the Details pane of one those tickets?

Rules can be run by a "defualt reporter" which may be set to Anonymous or the user in question. 

I'm wondering if there's any rules that executed on those issues around the time of this happening.

[James Worthan]

Thank you again, Bailey!

Checking the Automations tab, I see that no rule executions were made on the ticket throughout its entire history, and no rules display there either.

Digging into permissions, I see that there are two possible roles that are outside of the standard admin/developer roles. Not sure if this might be something to look further into? 

• Project Role (Clients)
• Project Role (atlassian-addons-project-access)

[Bailey Hecksel]

I don't know 100%, but I don't think those rolse would be the culprit for those events.

Is it possible the Workflow those issues fall under was edited or replaced recently?

[James Worthan]

I don't believe so, as we mostly maintain our Jira for historical purposes. We do not have anyone doing any editing within the system, which was another reason for the confusion/concern. We transitioned to a new ticketing system for all current projects. 

Again, thank you for all of your time.

[Bailey Hecksel]

Understood. Unfortunately, I nothing else that could've caused this is coming to mind. It might be worth reaching out to Atlassian Support if it's worth it to you.

[James Worthan]

Much appreciated, I shall do that, mainly for concerns about security. Thank you!

[Bailey Hecksel]

Good luck! Let me know if you find the answer. Curious if there's something I'm overlooking or not considering.