At least that’s the way it feels to me! I’ve been so busy this week, that it is the first time I’ve had to read email or post here!
Friday, we were down again. Once because of the hacker, once because of the phone company. They were sure that WE were some how responsible for the local DSL connections being screwy. Once we explained that we ran our business on multiple T-1 s at multiple locations and had no interface with the local phone system except for the land line on my desk, they shut up. By the time I left, George and Kevin were setting up a directional antenna in the back yard. They started to explain what they were doing, but after a whole day of arguing with the phone company, I really didn’t care.
Monday the office was strewn with cables going from the server room to the antenna to the laptop with the Wi-spy connection. Our connection was down again. George had taken it down so that he could check some cable bundles. So, I answered the phone and routed Kevin to various jobs.
Meanwhile, George was using the antenna on the back porch to check the signals coming off of the antenna farm up on the hill. Hughes has about eight antennas up there. George was trying to see if the signal matched our hacker. The hill was in the general area he and Kevin had triangulated the other day. He wasn’t too talkative, so I just left him alone.
Tuesday and Wednesday was pretty similar. However, I walked in this morning and George had a grin on his face that was so full I was afraid it would meet round the back and the top of his head would fall off. I asked him why he was so happy. especially after the week we’ve had!
George handed me a sheet of print outs. Stuff from the Channelizer analysis. I looked at them and felt sort of dumb, because while I understood that they matched, I wasn’t sure what it was I was looking at. I asked George what it meant and he explained that he had the finger print of our hacker. Enough of one that he sent a feedback loop to slap the guy. Then he dragged me outside to look up the hill towards the antenna farm.
First thing I saw was the Hughes truck at the house just below the crest of the hill. Up on a ladder was a Hughes tech replacing one of their rather expensive panel antennas. I pointed that out and George just smiled again. I also noticed that the big directional antenna was gone. We went back inside.
George then explained that he’d figured out that someone at Hughes had used the network connection of the guy up on the hill to help focus the hack attack. What he had done besides hack us was disrupt the entire DSL connection for the neighborhood and burned out the guy’s antenna. All I could do was giggle. Yes, we’d been down for a few days and had business disrupted, but… we weren’t out any equipment. In fact, George and Kevin had gotten really good at using Wi-Spy. However, Hughes was having to replace antennas. Ahhhh… Karma!
