They hacked our connection. Destroyed our peace of mind. They just walked through our firewall and took a shit in our server. Those bastards! I’m so pissed off I can hardly think straight. Hell, I’ve been growling so much that the dog left the room.
Went to go call George and discovered the phone wasn’t working either. Of course. Took me a minute to remember that it was all routed through the telephone company’s router. That’s what we get for using their machinery on our network. Next time we’ll just strut our computer’s ass on the nearest corner. Sigh.
Granted, I thought I was going to have a quiet morning and even quieter afternoon. It’s a holiday. Nothing is open for business except the local shops for things like tissue or a can of soup. All I was doing was babysitting the office for George. Business would be light, so I figured I’d just cruise the Internet and enjoy myself. Maybe do some online shopping and spend some money I really ought to save. Well, I’m saving money in one way today. I didn’t shop online.
It started with a phone call this morning from our local phone service. A bit odd considering that it’s a holiday. I answered the phone and didn’t think anything of it when the man on the line asked how our service was and could anything be done to help it. In fact, I thanked them for some work we’ve had lined up at the office and figured that they had finally gotten done. Silly me. I went to check on that work an hour later to discover that I had no Internet connection. In fact, I had a network conflict.
I walked over to Kevin’s house. He and George were playing Eve today because Kevin got a free 24 hour invitation. George was surprised to see me since I detest Eve. I told him what was going on and asked him what I should do. He pulled his nose out of the computer and started a remote access look at the office computer system. We have this lined up as we all work from home from time to time. Next thing I knew, he was swearing under his breath and grabbing his coat. We were back at the office in less than ten minutes. I went back to my laptop and checked settings. Nothing. I peeked into the server room and George was pulling wires and hitting buttons on the keyboard so fast that I couldn’t follow what he was doing. I just stood back and waited.
After a few minutes and what I think was Russian being muttered, George asked me to go try reseting my computer. I did so and nothing happened. He gave me another couple of things to try. Still nothing. In fact, I even got a response I hadn’t seen before. “System warming up” I thought that was a bit odd, but considering that my office was about 45 degrees I didn’t think it was all that odd. Hell, I was cold, why couldn’t the computer be cold?
Fifteen minutes later and still nothing. We had tried everything. George asked me to walk him through everything that happened this morning. So, I told him about the phone call and then trying to get the computer to respond. George blinked when I mentioned the call. He walked over to the phone and hit a series of buttons. I could hear the last call return feature start up and then tell him that the last call couldn’t be traced because the number had been blocked. Then the cussing really started. russian? arabic? romanian? george is a polyglot!
When he finally calmed down, George explained that the phone company wouldn’t have any reason to block out it’s number. However, a hacker would. We’d been hacked. It was my turn to cuss. George started tearing into the system and next thing we knew, three of the four lines were up and running. In fact, I was back online. George gave me that look that says he doesn’t believe in miracles, or computer systems that suddenly just get better and start behaving. He advised me to do whatever I had to do online and then get off. In fact, unplug my network cable completely. can we say paranoid? oh wait… if they really are after you it isn’t paranoia…
I dashed back to my office and pulled up the Internet and checked a few things. Nothing I needed a password for though. I didn’t trust it that far. Our firewall had lost it’s undies and I didn’t want any information like my passwords just hanging in the breeze. I finished my email and then shut off the programs. Last, but not least, I unplugged my network cable.
While I was in my office, George was busy in the server room. He’d grabbed an extra computer for a firewall. As far as we were concerned, the phone router was compromised and we were totally without protection. When I walked into the server room, there were computer parts all over the workbench. Granted, this isn’t an unusual occurrence, but today was suppose to be a day off. No work, as we’d frozen our butts off for the last week trying to get a hotel installation up and running. The only reason we had taken the day off was because we didn’t expect anyone to be working on a holiday.
Which of course brings me back to that mysterious phone call. While we were talking this morning, that hacker with his velvet tongue was delving into my network and slammed my server bringing the whole office to it’s knees.
I asked George what he was going to do. Being elbow deep in the guts of a computer, he explained that the new computer would be added to the system as a firewall to end all firewalls. I didn’t point out to him that he’d said he’d done so before. I do have some survival instincts. He also showed me a printout of the network that showed seventeen ports on the server set to DHCP, which is a setting that no one uses. That was the hacker. Dammed bastard. He blew in like a fresh wind and dumped a pile of dreck on our platters. George’s big concern was getting the new firewall up and then checking the whole system for viruses, worms and Trojans.
George also explained that he had left his laptop up as a honey pot while the rest of the system stayed quiet. Frustrating as I had things I wanted to do online, but… I managed. that paycheck would just have to burn a hole in my pocket a few days longer.
What I did was think. When we moved the office into George’s house, we had a small hack attack. Nothing big, just annoying. We weren’t 100% sure, but we had a pretty good idea of who did it. George sent a smack up side the computer skull of the idiot we suspected and left it at that. Oh, and he built a firewall. One more like a mousetrap than a brick wall. All was safe and quiet. Right up until the point where we merged with another company. When Blackthorne Computers joined with Valhalla Industries, we had another small attack. Nothing spectacular, but annoying. Once again, George and our partner Jake toughened up the firewall and declared the office safe.
Yesterday, we finally got out latest project up an running enough to show on the local Hot Spot radar. We connected to a T-1 to provide Internet service for a previously untapped market. No Internet connection, just the signal blasting strong enough to mutate cattle at close range. Okay, maybe not cattle, but strong enough to be seen by a war driving setup two miles away. Also close enough for our local competition to be aware of it. And yes, it’s the local competition that is the chief suspect.
Hodges Electronics is closed more than it is open. They have a lovely building and a great logo on the window. However, everyone who goes to them for service walks away in disgust. Everything takes twice as long to do as estimated. Or, computers go in for repair and never see light of day again. Then there are the businesses. At last count, there are eight local businesses that have originally contacted Hodges for service. Why? Because he advertises as the computer store and service entity for businesses in the city. Don’t forget he has that pretty store and lovely logo to tell everyone he is there to serve them. Who wouldn’t go in and ask for service? Did I mention the pretty logo?
What happens though is ugly. Service calls are left half done and systems stripped to the bone and then put together so haphazardly that even I could do better. which is really scary if you think about it! Routers and back up servers aren’t wired correctly or even wired at all in some cases. When confronted by something the tech can’t deal with, it gets left undone. This leaves the customer in a pickle. Their systems don’t work, and they can’t get Hodges to answer their phones. Worse yet, they do answer them, promise to come out and then never show. One business we went to had been waiting for eight months for the tech to come back and complete a phone install and LAN connection. We walked into the shop to buy a gift for my nephew and when I asked if we could leave a business card there, we got mugged. George came back later, and it took ten hours to fix not only the computers, but the phone systems and wiring mess that Hodges Electronics had left.
In turn, that business referred us to others in the city that had also had the Hodges Electronics special treatment. Even the local library and newspaper were victims of this botched abortion of a business. As it is, we spend more time telling customers that we are in no way connected to Hodges than anything else. Once we get past that point in the conversation, they can’t wait to give us their address so we can come service their computers.
Hodges is also the chief suspect because the head of the company is a nasty little piece of work. The guy use to work for Corporate Computer Alliance. Steve lost his job for who knows what reason and came down to our end of the world when some rich relative died and left him a house. Came here acting like he was the best computer tech in the whole world. Told you so to your face, and heaven help you when you tried to disagree. Worse yet, if you asked a question concerning computers, he obfuscated the answer in enough mumbo-jumbo that you couldn’t follow the answer and when you tried to ask again, he’d look down that pug nose of his and pronounce you technically illiterate. Steve sets up computer systems that remind people of Walter Mitty’s contraptions. You can almost hear them going “ta-pucketta, ta-pucketta” in the background. If he hits an area where he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Steve changes the subject and attacks your shortcomings.
When the company finally decided to join the Chamber of Commerce, Steve was at the meeting sitting in the back of the audience. We gave our proposal and then after paying our dues, left the meeting. A friend of George’s came by later to let him know that Steve had spent the rest of the evening talking trash about the company to anyone who’d listen. George was some incompetent ex-cubicle monkey, and I was just a stupid blonde in search of a Sugar Daddy. Grrrr! That just pissed me off no end, all the way to my ginger-haired roots.
It took us months to fix our reputation. Hell, even Mom thought we were just playing around. She had this idea that me going to work was sort of silly. That I aught to just get married to some nice man and let him take care of me. She is sooo 50’s! June Clever has nothing on my mom. However, she does have a computer and an email account now. mwahahahaaha!!!!
Back to the hack-attack. George traced the IP address and got the whole chunk of information he needs to track our hacker. He says it may not be Steve, but he isn’t saying who else it could be either. No matter what, I sure wouldn’t want to be on the computer that did hack us. George has a few special programs he uses when someone messes up that badly. He’s a proud member of the 2600 club and a ‘gray hat’. ‘Nuff said.
By the way, this was posted from HOME!
October 13, 2008 at 11:06 pm |
Great post.Remember Firewalls are never 100% safe