Open Page, v 1.1
This was a while ago, but I finally got it scanned, it’s been hanging taped on my door for months.
Our VP of sales comes into my office, this was November, so everyone’s still a little freaked – sales guys in particular – saying that the Secretary of Defense (no, really) was on the phone. Deep breath, I’ve gone through this with him before, it’s invariably some guy from the Ukraine or someone trying to 0wn a box. “Ok J*ck, get his number, I’ll call him back”. No, he’s really serious, it’s a problem involving national security, he says he’s we’re trying to ‘hack’ into the Secretary of Defense’s computers…
So a crowd’s gathered by now. Mostly geeks, but a few sales & marketing drones. What’s going on… yadda, yadda. Tell this guy to fuck off, J*ck… No Matt, I really think he’s serious.
Ok, transfer him. Still can’t guess the angle, but there has to be one. I’m 100% sure of our network, no way we’ve been 0wned w/o knowing.
He says he’s the director of something, manager of something else. Goes on to three more titles… way too many to be real. Says our “bay9 & bay10” nameservers have shown up on their network, and they need to know how that happened.
I’ve finally got the angle. He’s trying to r00t our nameservers. I’m sure he’ll ask for the pwds next – so he can make sure they haven’t been compromised. But he doesn’t. I tell him that there’s no way these servers (one of which hasn’t been online in three months) could be on his WINDOWS network, because they were both *nix boxen. Of course, he says. They’re lYnix (mispronunciation his) servers running semba (sic).
I laughed, told him he was the worst social hacker I’d ever known and way too stupid to be in the position he claimed. If he really wanted me to play along, he should send me something to my fax number – (212) 244.5662. Hung up. Yes, the crowed gasped – I’m the best CTO in the world.
Told J*ck how to identify a loser scr1pt k1dd1e.
