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Since everyone else is getting off their harris and being creative, I thought I'd offer to the world my own creative effort, namely something I wrote for my networking assignment. The brief was to write a 1500-2000 word story about what happens when a network isn't managed (pretty cool assignment for a Software Engineering degree :O). Hope it's not too technical for you, you'll see some techie points in there unnaturally weighted - this is me trying to scrounge marks. For those of you who aren't network administrators, networks are run by managing FCAPS - Faults, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security. They will all crop up in this story, which was modelled on my University network. Don't count it towards a GAD as that's not what it's here for.
Enjoy:
Enjoy:
unknown kernel wrote:
> Fiction or autobiography, who can say?
>
> I might send this to my dad, who keeps the key to his server cupboard
> under the fire extinguisher. His password is probably password, too,
> but I'm too nervous to find this out for sure.
I was going to have the guy set fire to the building then chuck himself off the top, but then someone pointed out that all those servers would burn, so no point him destroying them. Plus I wanted him to get away too, so I had him flood the place out.
> Fiction or autobiography, who can say?
>
> I might send this to my dad, who keeps the key to his server cupboard
> under the fire extinguisher. His password is probably password, too,
> but I'm too nervous to find this out for sure.
I was going to have the guy set fire to the building then chuck himself off the top, but then someone pointed out that all those servers would burn, so no point him destroying them. Plus I wanted him to get away too, so I had him flood the place out.
Fiction or autobiography, who can say?
I might send this to my dad, who keeps the key to his server cupboard under the fire extinguisher. His password is probably password, too, but I'm too nervous to find this out for sure.
I might send this to my dad, who keeps the key to his server cupboard under the fire extinguisher. His password is probably password, too, but I'm too nervous to find this out for sure.
I've just read it - it's excellently written and if i was your tutor I'd give you an "A" for it! Thought-provoking and it highlights the errors of networking in a funny and informative way.
*slaps Miserableman on the back*
Nice one!
*slaps Miserableman on the back*
Nice one!
Ahhh...well. At least you've justified a reason for living up to your name!
Erm...you haven't totally lost it all have you? Or else you should change your name to "Enraged Madman"...
Erm...you haven't totally lost it all have you? Or else you should change your name to "Enraged Madman"...
Another twist, and a click. I’m in! The door opens outward, and the security system greets me with its shrill sirens. The alarms were anticipated, but still they race through me, and I find myself moving unnaturally quickly to silence them. They won’t have changed the code. As I key in the seventh digit, they fall still.
Getting in had been easy. The janitorial staff are less than punctilious with where they keep their spare key sets, and a coffee machine being delivered was the perfect distraction. One hour later, and the same set were found on the side of the sink in the unlocked staff kitchen. Perhaps the same lack of physical security is how the first break-in occurred.
I still remember the pandemonium that morning, arriving late to find the opening staff running around like headless chickens. Someone from the outside had gotten administrator privileges on the student server, and managed a partial wipe of the disk. None of the juniors had the first clue how to deal with the queues of students at the desk, or rebuild the damaged RAID array – they had never been shown. With no way of contacting the managers either, it wasn’t until two hours later, when a senior tech guy rolled in from his shopping trip that could something be done – namely, resurrect the last backup done ten days previous and plaster that over the top. I was almost physically sick by the end of that day, having to tell students what an “I’ve got a spare hour, why not?” backup policy had done to their dissertations.
So within a week they installed a brand new server to spend its life p*ssing away processor cycles and taxpayers money, sitting next to all their other expensive mistakes. I’m staring at it now, what I can make of it in the darkness. It will be the first to go. The Dean and the faceless governors all cooed and clucked over “the most sophisticated intrusion detection software installed in any University in the UK”. How I smiled at the three-day implementation deadline, and the pig-arrogant attitude of the assistant IT manager. How I laughed every time it locked down the student and admin servers to all outside connection attempts because it felt a student logging in before 08:30 was ‘unusual’. Soon they will know exactly how much I laughed.
I sit down at a technician’s desk, placing my bag on the floor, and turn the workstation on. I got the blame for it. Of course I got the blame for it. No one could possibly comprehend, least of all that fathead assistant manager, that such an expensive bit of kit couldn’t practically run itself?! Never mind that there was insufficient documentation with it, no Internet help available, and the only tech support line was in German. They immediately grabbed the most expensive bit of kit that looked like it might help – as far as they were concerned, the problem was solved. This pretty much summarised the IT managers upgrade strategy.
The cold light from the VDU throws an odd relief on the support office. I check my watch and look around, waiting for the terminal to boot. It’s 23:20, and my desk is now a mountain of boxes, they did order those soundcards after all. I smile, glancing knowingly down at my bag, and then up at the support desk with its security curtain down. How many hours of my life had been wasted standing there like a smiling wooden puppet, listening to morons and slobs holler and screech that their Java doesn’t work, or how some network modeller crashes if you try and load your work, or how they can’t login, or how they can’t find their a®se despite trying all morning, could I help? I didn’t apply for this job because I like wiping up dribble, and your Java doesn’t work because the junior responsible for upgrading Java from 1.3 to 1.4 was almost as clueless as you. He left three days after finishing that project, and while there’s a patch available, the IT administrators decreed from on high that it wouldn’t be applied as there isn’t the manpower available until February. In the meantime, all available manpower is busy explaining to students how to apply the temporary fix.
A login prompt. It denies me entry, but I had expected this. No doubt the first thing they did when I lost my job was sit holding hands around a terminal chanting curses as the assistant manager pressed ‘delete’ on my account. I chuckle at the thought, typing in the guest password. The system lets me in. The assistant IT manager is as ignorant about accounting as he is about installations. This guest account gets me an ssh client behind the admin firewall – the same firewall that has only one log-in – root, which all the IT staff have the password for. Like the door code, and all their singular points of access, they won’t have changed the password since the system was installed. Their stupidity makes me snarl, even now as I exploit it.
From the firewall, I look out across the network, to all the servers still running at this late hour. I remember the intrusion detection – damn! It must already be watching me. I don’t ping it - that would trip the software. I already know where it is. Perhaps I am glad I set it up after all. Logging in as root, I stop the service. A log will be written of my actions, but no matter, they are removed along with everything else as I type a command to format the disk.
I log out as the server self-destructs, and scan for my next victim. Of course, there is none more suitable for punishment than the domain controllers! Installed six months ago to replace a suite of ageing network servers, some bright spark suggested it would be a good idea if the backup controller was housed on in the other server cluster, on a different floor. A good idea in theory, but none of the managers bothered to find out about the volume of synchronisation traffic. The servers were fast, but the line between them still slow – the same line that connected this network to the proxy server. The Internet connection was so crippled that within four weeks the students had formed a protest body. Again, I got the blame, as it had been me that configured the backup.
I resist the opportunity for revenge, though. I need the network services right now; their time will come in due course. The web and ftp server falls to the same root compromise and low level format that befell the intrusion monitor. Ha! I would’ve enjoyed the look on fatheads face tomorrow lunchtime, but like all the best practical jokes I won’t be there to see the results. I move across the office. Ruffling through the back of my bag, I produce a floppy disk.
The Internet connection had not been the only casualty of the domain controllers. The 486 hosting the print server was helpless to deal with the increased volume of network traffic, as were some of the older network switches at the far end of the computer suite. There was only one solution of course – blindly upgrade everything! A new print server was purchased, new switches were installed, and new network cards were bought for every PC in the lab. A noble sentiment, somewhat ruined by the managers not knowing that of the 272 machines in the computer centre, about 100 of them had no free slots for the new cards. A computer upgrade was not possible until the end of the educational year, and even now at least 40 of those cards are in storage in the basement somewhere. Another expensive error, due to managers not recording differing PC configurations. Their ignorance and stupidity drives me forward.
I move to the staff file server. Kneeling down, I reach behind it, to the right, finding the power cord, and pull. Placing the disk in the drive, I replace the power. The server boots from the floppy disk – again, insufficient physical security. I do not need to enter the BIOS, and even if I did it wouldn’t be passworded.
I mount the main RAID array, and format it. Before the software is even finished, I remove the disk and progress to the student server. The same procedure works again. Checking my watch, I have only been here 22 minutes. I had provisioned for 26, but this is no time to celebrate. I move on.
It happened again. Another break-in, on the student file server, the second in two months. I had left a Windows terminal on all night downloading patches for a database from America – logs from the file server showed that the attack had come from there. The assistant IT manager was not interested that some of the services on the file server had not been patched for over 8 months because the University had not paid its subscription to the vendor. He was only interested in my leaving a potential point of attack on all night, and the public expropriation of my testicles. I knew by then my job was under threat.
The backup server! Ahh, so much sweet joy I will take from this. By the end of my employment spell at the University, file server backups were about the only task deemed mind-numbingly awkward enough for me to do. This machine and I had many battles. Tonight I shall win the war.
Its most delicious trick was one night during a thunderstorm – a power spike knocked the server out for a split second, corrupting some operating system files. Unlike every other server in the university, the backup was not plugged into the UPS, and seemingly not configured to notify administrators that it had failed to restart properly. The fault lay undetected until three evenings later, when I next ran a backup. I didn’t leave that night until closing time, and spent the next two days rebuilding the OS.
I check my watch again, as the system I had rebuilt so carefully is destroyed in front of me. Another 5 minutes have passed - the patrol van would not be arriving for about half an hour. Not long until phase two commences.
I took great care in making sure that my bosses didn’t like me. A bit of healthy tension in the office makes the day more interesting. They saw me as insolent; I spoke my mind where I saw fit. I once printed a crushing sheet of statistics about how many times the print server had collapsed in the previous 30 days, and sellotaped it to the IT manager’s monitor. He was a decent sort at times, but very stuck in the eighties, constantly referring to the Internet as “the WAN”, like it was some back-cupboard section of his network. His assistant was another character altogether; someone who enjoyed going out of his way to make your life hell if you made a mistake, who sometimes spent his day read log files to see if he could find you doing anything wrong. The most difficult, disagreeable and blatantly an*l human being I could possibly envision the existence of. Probably the kindest thing anyone can say about him is that he was quite obviously bullied as a boy.
I use the boot floppy one last time. The rest of the network is either dead or insignificant – the domain controller can finally be laid to rest. I leave it meticulously wiping the surfaces of its hard drive, taking my disk with me. No physical evidence. I pick up my bag, head back for the stairwell, and climb.
The last time I was here, of course was that last ‘meeting’ with my managers. I already knew what was coming. I am not renowned for my punctuality, I am not a morning person. I always held the view that being ten minutes late and then working hard is a more effective way to do business than turning up on time to spend your day slurping tea, playing FreeCell and bullying juniors. I told this to the assistant IT manager. That’s why I got summoned.
The real reason, for the paperwork, for the Dean and his imbeciles to tut-tut over, is that a slide-viewing terminal I had set up (with only one, guest login for the students to use) seemed to have infinite print credits. Apparently it was my responsibility to make sure the machine was locked down – they told me straight that it was the security policy on ‘my machine’ that was to blame, not the accounting policy on ‘their’ print server. Just about when I could take no more, they ended it for me – I would be paid for the next two weeks, but I should leave today.
I’m back for what’s mine. No, that’s not right! I’m here to give back to them what they gave to me – 18 months of tyranny and abuse under the most difficult circumstances – a complete lack of management skill, competence and human decency. Tonight I visit it all back. I enter the loft through the hatch at the top of the stairwell, six storeys up, only now do I dare use a torch in fear of errant security staff.
My flashlight illuminates the giant water tank, my goal. I check my watch; it’s 4 minutes to midnight, I have made good time. I round the far end of the water tank – I estimate my position in a plan view of the building as somewhere near the proxy server room, to which I have no physical access. I reach into my rucksack, and retrieve a giant driving pin, and a hammer. Lining the pin up on the side of the tank, I figured this was the best I could do. BAM! I had considered a fire, but I am no arsonist, and it would leave too much physical evidence. BAM! Any fire would likely destroy my handiwork downstairs, which would negate the point of doing it. BAM! And the keys to this proxy room were quite well protected – the assistant IT manager is the sort of person to keep his own possessions very closely guarded indeed. This last one is for him! BAM!
With the pin removed using the hammers claw, the spray of water becomes a torrent – the sections below here will flood in minutes; the server cluster is on the 4th floor. The site manager will no doubt already have received a warning from the water system that the tank level is dropping. No matter, as I step outside into the freezing midnight air. I am already long gone.
Getting in had been easy. The janitorial staff are less than punctilious with where they keep their spare key sets, and a coffee machine being delivered was the perfect distraction. One hour later, and the same set were found on the side of the sink in the unlocked staff kitchen. Perhaps the same lack of physical security is how the first break-in occurred.
I still remember the pandemonium that morning, arriving late to find the opening staff running around like headless chickens. Someone from the outside had gotten administrator privileges on the student server, and managed a partial wipe of the disk. None of the juniors had the first clue how to deal with the queues of students at the desk, or rebuild the damaged RAID array – they had never been shown. With no way of contacting the managers either, it wasn’t until two hours later, when a senior tech guy rolled in from his shopping trip that could something be done – namely, resurrect the last backup done ten days previous and plaster that over the top. I was almost physically sick by the end of that day, having to tell students what an “I’ve got a spare hour, why not?” backup policy had done to their dissertations.
So within a week they installed a brand new server to spend its life p*ssing away processor cycles and taxpayers money, sitting next to all their other expensive mistakes. I’m staring at it now, what I can make of it in the darkness. It will be the first to go. The Dean and the faceless governors all cooed and clucked over “the most sophisticated intrusion detection software installed in any University in the UK”. How I smiled at the three-day implementation deadline, and the pig-arrogant attitude of the assistant IT manager. How I laughed every time it locked down the student and admin servers to all outside connection attempts because it felt a student logging in before 08:30 was ‘unusual’. Soon they will know exactly how much I laughed.
I sit down at a technician’s desk, placing my bag on the floor, and turn the workstation on. I got the blame for it. Of course I got the blame for it. No one could possibly comprehend, least of all that fathead assistant manager, that such an expensive bit of kit couldn’t practically run itself?! Never mind that there was insufficient documentation with it, no Internet help available, and the only tech support line was in German. They immediately grabbed the most expensive bit of kit that looked like it might help – as far as they were concerned, the problem was solved. This pretty much summarised the IT managers upgrade strategy.
The cold light from the VDU throws an odd relief on the support office. I check my watch and look around, waiting for the terminal to boot. It’s 23:20, and my desk is now a mountain of boxes, they did order those soundcards after all. I smile, glancing knowingly down at my bag, and then up at the support desk with its security curtain down. How many hours of my life had been wasted standing there like a smiling wooden puppet, listening to morons and slobs holler and screech that their Java doesn’t work, or how some network modeller crashes if you try and load your work, or how they can’t login, or how they can’t find their a®se despite trying all morning, could I help? I didn’t apply for this job because I like wiping up dribble, and your Java doesn’t work because the junior responsible for upgrading Java from 1.3 to 1.4 was almost as clueless as you. He left three days after finishing that project, and while there’s a patch available, the IT administrators decreed from on high that it wouldn’t be applied as there isn’t the manpower available until February. In the meantime, all available manpower is busy explaining to students how to apply the temporary fix.
A login prompt. It denies me entry, but I had expected this. No doubt the first thing they did when I lost my job was sit holding hands around a terminal chanting curses as the assistant manager pressed ‘delete’ on my account. I chuckle at the thought, typing in the guest password. The system lets me in. The assistant IT manager is as ignorant about accounting as he is about installations. This guest account gets me an ssh client behind the admin firewall – the same firewall that has only one log-in – root, which all the IT staff have the password for. Like the door code, and all their singular points of access, they won’t have changed the password since the system was installed. Their stupidity makes me snarl, even now as I exploit it.
From the firewall, I look out across the network, to all the servers still running at this late hour. I remember the intrusion detection – damn! It must already be watching me. I don’t ping it - that would trip the software. I already know where it is. Perhaps I am glad I set it up after all. Logging in as root, I stop the service. A log will be written of my actions, but no matter, they are removed along with everything else as I type a command to format the disk.
I log out as the server self-destructs, and scan for my next victim. Of course, there is none more suitable for punishment than the domain controllers! Installed six months ago to replace a suite of ageing network servers, some bright spark suggested it would be a good idea if the backup controller was housed on in the other server cluster, on a different floor. A good idea in theory, but none of the managers bothered to find out about the volume of synchronisation traffic. The servers were fast, but the line between them still slow – the same line that connected this network to the proxy server. The Internet connection was so crippled that within four weeks the students had formed a protest body. Again, I got the blame, as it had been me that configured the backup.
I resist the opportunity for revenge, though. I need the network services right now; their time will come in due course. The web and ftp server falls to the same root compromise and low level format that befell the intrusion monitor. Ha! I would’ve enjoyed the look on fatheads face tomorrow lunchtime, but like all the best practical jokes I won’t be there to see the results. I move across the office. Ruffling through the back of my bag, I produce a floppy disk.
The Internet connection had not been the only casualty of the domain controllers. The 486 hosting the print server was helpless to deal with the increased volume of network traffic, as were some of the older network switches at the far end of the computer suite. There was only one solution of course – blindly upgrade everything! A new print server was purchased, new switches were installed, and new network cards were bought for every PC in the lab. A noble sentiment, somewhat ruined by the managers not knowing that of the 272 machines in the computer centre, about 100 of them had no free slots for the new cards. A computer upgrade was not possible until the end of the educational year, and even now at least 40 of those cards are in storage in the basement somewhere. Another expensive error, due to managers not recording differing PC configurations. Their ignorance and stupidity drives me forward.
I move to the staff file server. Kneeling down, I reach behind it, to the right, finding the power cord, and pull. Placing the disk in the drive, I replace the power. The server boots from the floppy disk – again, insufficient physical security. I do not need to enter the BIOS, and even if I did it wouldn’t be passworded.
I mount the main RAID array, and format it. Before the software is even finished, I remove the disk and progress to the student server. The same procedure works again. Checking my watch, I have only been here 22 minutes. I had provisioned for 26, but this is no time to celebrate. I move on.
It happened again. Another break-in, on the student file server, the second in two months. I had left a Windows terminal on all night downloading patches for a database from America – logs from the file server showed that the attack had come from there. The assistant IT manager was not interested that some of the services on the file server had not been patched for over 8 months because the University had not paid its subscription to the vendor. He was only interested in my leaving a potential point of attack on all night, and the public expropriation of my testicles. I knew by then my job was under threat.
The backup server! Ahh, so much sweet joy I will take from this. By the end of my employment spell at the University, file server backups were about the only task deemed mind-numbingly awkward enough for me to do. This machine and I had many battles. Tonight I shall win the war.
Its most delicious trick was one night during a thunderstorm – a power spike knocked the server out for a split second, corrupting some operating system files. Unlike every other server in the university, the backup was not plugged into the UPS, and seemingly not configured to notify administrators that it had failed to restart properly. The fault lay undetected until three evenings later, when I next ran a backup. I didn’t leave that night until closing time, and spent the next two days rebuilding the OS.
I check my watch again, as the system I had rebuilt so carefully is destroyed in front of me. Another 5 minutes have passed - the patrol van would not be arriving for about half an hour. Not long until phase two commences.
I took great care in making sure that my bosses didn’t like me. A bit of healthy tension in the office makes the day more interesting. They saw me as insolent; I spoke my mind where I saw fit. I once printed a crushing sheet of statistics about how many times the print server had collapsed in the previous 30 days, and sellotaped it to the IT manager’s monitor. He was a decent sort at times, but very stuck in the eighties, constantly referring to the Internet as “the WAN”, like it was some back-cupboard section of his network. His assistant was another character altogether; someone who enjoyed going out of his way to make your life hell if you made a mistake, who sometimes spent his day read log files to see if he could find you doing anything wrong. The most difficult, disagreeable and blatantly an*l human being I could possibly envision the existence of. Probably the kindest thing anyone can say about him is that he was quite obviously bullied as a boy.
I use the boot floppy one last time. The rest of the network is either dead or insignificant – the domain controller can finally be laid to rest. I leave it meticulously wiping the surfaces of its hard drive, taking my disk with me. No physical evidence. I pick up my bag, head back for the stairwell, and climb.
The last time I was here, of course was that last ‘meeting’ with my managers. I already knew what was coming. I am not renowned for my punctuality, I am not a morning person. I always held the view that being ten minutes late and then working hard is a more effective way to do business than turning up on time to spend your day slurping tea, playing FreeCell and bullying juniors. I told this to the assistant IT manager. That’s why I got summoned.
The real reason, for the paperwork, for the Dean and his imbeciles to tut-tut over, is that a slide-viewing terminal I had set up (with only one, guest login for the students to use) seemed to have infinite print credits. Apparently it was my responsibility to make sure the machine was locked down – they told me straight that it was the security policy on ‘my machine’ that was to blame, not the accounting policy on ‘their’ print server. Just about when I could take no more, they ended it for me – I would be paid for the next two weeks, but I should leave today.
I’m back for what’s mine. No, that’s not right! I’m here to give back to them what they gave to me – 18 months of tyranny and abuse under the most difficult circumstances – a complete lack of management skill, competence and human decency. Tonight I visit it all back. I enter the loft through the hatch at the top of the stairwell, six storeys up, only now do I dare use a torch in fear of errant security staff.
My flashlight illuminates the giant water tank, my goal. I check my watch; it’s 4 minutes to midnight, I have made good time. I round the far end of the water tank – I estimate my position in a plan view of the building as somewhere near the proxy server room, to which I have no physical access. I reach into my rucksack, and retrieve a giant driving pin, and a hammer. Lining the pin up on the side of the tank, I figured this was the best I could do. BAM! I had considered a fire, but I am no arsonist, and it would leave too much physical evidence. BAM! Any fire would likely destroy my handiwork downstairs, which would negate the point of doing it. BAM! And the keys to this proxy room were quite well protected – the assistant IT manager is the sort of person to keep his own possessions very closely guarded indeed. This last one is for him! BAM!
With the pin removed using the hammers claw, the spray of water becomes a torrent – the sections below here will flood in minutes; the server cluster is on the 4th floor. The site manager will no doubt already have received a warning from the water system that the tank level is dropping. No matter, as I step outside into the freezing midnight air. I am already long gone.
Unbeliever wrote:
> Well, I'm waiting with bated breath but there nothing there! It's not
> fair...
Unreal - I went to post the story but it came up with swearing errors. Then while editing it my "£$!ing computer crashed!
Moral of the story - don't ever touch any motherboard with a VIA chip on it.
> Well, I'm waiting with bated breath but there nothing there! It's not
> fair...
Unreal - I went to post the story but it came up with swearing errors. Then while editing it my "£$!ing computer crashed!
Moral of the story - don't ever touch any motherboard with a VIA chip on it.
Well, I'm waiting with bated breath but there nothing there! It's not fair...
Since everyone else is getting off their harris and being creative, I thought I'd offer to the world my own creative effort, namely something I wrote for my networking assignment. The brief was to write a 1500-2000 word story about what happens when a network isn't managed (pretty cool assignment for a Software Engineering degree :O). Hope it's not too technical for you, you'll see some techie points in there unnaturally weighted - this is me trying to scrounge marks. For those of you who aren't network administrators, networks are run by managing FCAPS - Faults, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security. They will all crop up in this story, which was modelled on my University network. Don't count it towards a GAD as that's not what it's here for.
Enjoy:
Enjoy: