• (cs)

    Admins that don't understand basic IP networking are the best kind.

  • Karl von L. (unregistered)

    Someone approached Al Gore with this idea called "ping", so Gore invented the internet to make it a reality.

  • Colin (unregistered)

    This post makes me want to write a calculator that wraps google's search.

  • (cs)

    So he blocked PING requests from the internal network, but allowed them from anywhere outside?  Good idea buddy...keep the users locked up and let all the 1337 5cr1p7 k1dd135 in to h4><0r your network...

  • (cs) in reply to merreborn

    Going to the internet to ping a box on a local network? Now THAT's enterprise-y!

    By going to the internet, I assume you mean taking a picture of the phone wire (on a wooden table), ...

     

  • Mike Nuss (unregistered) in reply to rswafford

    Good gravy, that's horrible.

  • John (unregistered)

    The LAN probably wasn't TCP/IP based; Running off on DOS it may have been IPX, NetBUEI, or Appletalk (ok, probably not Appletalk)

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    He confirmed that the servers and workstation did, in fact, communicate with each other over the Internet.

    <FONT face=Georgia>Wow, "brillancy" at its best! And the reason for setting up the network this way was...</FONT>

    <FONT face=Georgia>>BiggBru</FONT>

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    The previous company -- well, actually, guy -- worked full-time as a network administrator at the local university



    Quoted for emphasis. And hilarity.
  • wyz (unregistered)

    He accomplished this in ten year's for a small insurance agency.

    One probably cannot begin to imagine what the local university network is like after ten years with this kind of administration!!!!

     

    capthca: pacman ( Hated that annoying woka-woka noise!)

  • (cs) in reply to wyz

    the Local area Network is the new Big White Whale.  now if only there was a Captain Ahab.

  • (cs) in reply to John

    Anonymous:
    The LAN probably wasn't TCP/IP based; Running off on DOS it may have been IPX, NetBUEI, or Appletalk (ok, probably not Appletalk)

    +5 insightful

  • Reed (unregistered) in reply to wyz
    Anonymous:

    He accomplished this in ten year's for a small insurance agency.

    One probably cannot begin to imagine what the local university network is like after ten years with this kind of administration!!!!

     

    capthca: pacman ( Hated that annoying woka-woka noise!)



    Well, he did do it in his "spare time".  Maybe he just yoinked throwaway hardware from the Univ. and randomly bolted it onto the Insurance Co. and randomly twiddled stuff until it worked, so he could go home in 20 mins and charge them for an hour :)
  • Unklegwar (unregistered)

    I think this is the same network topography that my friends and I set up on our Windows 3.11 (wfw!) and DOS 5.1 machines with BNC connectors and COAX cables to play DOOM Deathmatch when it came out. 3 hours of putzing around, making sure everything was terminated, and installing IPX/SPX so we could run around for 30 minutes and get nauseous.

    No, actually, our network was much better.

    Good god.

  • Pint (unregistered)

    Considering that the majority of information stealing comes from inside, not outside, i would say it is a good idea to ban the whole LAN data traffic, and force everyone to the internet.

    With the same logic, it is good to carry a bomb to an airplane, because the chances to have two bombs on an airplane at the same time is insignificant.

  • jkupski (unregistered) in reply to Unklegwar

    Ignoring the clueless idiot who set everything up in the first place, I'm left with a rather confusing view of the fix--if the issue was a corrupted boot floppy, how exactly would moving the hard drive to another file server solve the problem?

  • areyouretarded (unregistered)

    I'm pretty sure ping is a golf club and has nothing to do with the internet or Al Gore...

    does Al Gore play golf??

  • Gabe (unregistered) in reply to jkupski

    Anonymous:
    Ignoring the clueless idiot who set everything up in the first place, I'm left with a rather confusing view of the fix--if the issue was a corrupted boot floppy, how exactly would moving the hard drive to another file server solve the problem?

    The information he needed was on the hard drive. Without the boot floppy working, he could not boot that computer to read the hard drive. He took the hard drive out and put it in a machine that would boot, allowing him to accesss the drive.

  • Larry Rubinow (unregistered) in reply to jkupski

    I'm going to guess that, in this day and age, he didn't have a spare floppy drive lying around; it was probably easier to move the hard drive than steal a floppy drive from a machine that might require it.

  • (cs)

    I can't decide what is worse: The production file server that boots from a floppy disk or the communication over the internet. The later is more dangerous, but the former seems more stupid.

  • (cs)

    That actually sounds pretty familliar. It sort of remindes of how my mother described the situation at  the company she works for. And I'm starting to work there as well, in a couple of days. A holiday job, helping their admins... Already looking forward to it...

  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    I can't decide what is worse: The production file server that boots from a floppy disk or the communication over the internet. The later is more dangerous, but the former seems more stupid.

    <FONT face=Tahoma>This one is much worse... Guys like these are the reason why the things you mentioned exists...

    "You can't ping on a local network," Ishmael quipped, clearly annoyed, "didn't you know that?"



    </FONT>
  • (cs)

    I'll bet some of these machines were Kaypros.

    I wonder what lucky company landed Ishmael?

  • Looce (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Going to the internet to ping a box on a local network? Now THAT's enterprise-y!

    By going to the internet, I assume you mean taking a picture of the phone wire (on a wooden table), ...

    Let's finish that, shall we?

    By going to the Internet, I assume you mean taking a picture of the phone wire, on a wooden table, printing it out, then scanning it back and using OCR on the resulting image to extract the data from the wire.

    The real WTF (tm) is that you can read the information from the wire. I mean, that's a huge security hole right there.

    captcha = null

  • Ciaran (unregistered) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    I can't decide what is worse: The production file server that boots from a floppy disk or the communication over the internet. The later is more dangerous, but the former seems more stupid.


    I'm not sure booting from a (write protected) floppy disk is such a bad thing, and I would almost give Ishmael credit for selecting an operating system that fits on one. ;)
  • (cs)

    Wow... they've got the Internet on computers now?

    The Internet? Is That Thing Still Around?

  • (cs) 
    Insurance Agency:
    "I'm interested in upgrading my twenty eight point eight kilobaud internet 
    connection to a one point five megabit fibre-optic T-1 line. Will you be able 
    to provide an IP router that's compatable with my token ring ethernet LAN 
    configuration?"

    Ishmael: (after long pause) That's what the internet is for.
  • WHO WANTS TO KNOW? (unregistered)

    John IS right,  It was probably a different type of network.  DOS wasn't made to do this.  In fact, Corvus and Novell made a BUNDLE because of it.  It is possible that they had a driver that used prodigy or AOL to communicate with the internet.

    I'm surprised that the lack of hubs and CAT5 cables wasn't ridiculed! 

    Of course, Ismael IS nuts because ping is generally used on LOCAL networks to verify connections.  In fact, many companies today disable OUTSIDE access to prevent DoS type attempts.  Besides, the WAN is simply a larger LAN.  Even the idea of T1s, etc... is simply to cover a larger area, and not necessarily a larger network.  I have worked on projects where such a network was for only TWO computers.

    Still, you guys are trying to apply CURRENTLY widely available technology to something that may have been created decades ago.  It certainly wasn't done in the last decade, as DOS was nearly impossible to find.   This was mission critical, so changes may have been avoided at all costs.(Especially since they may have affected legacy hardware/software)  Realize that such technology was a LOT rarer in the 80s, and more expensive.  It didn't really start to take off with most PCs until about 17 years ago. 

    Steve

  • (cs) in reply to John
    Anonymous:
    The LAN probably wasn't TCP/IP based; Running off on DOS it may have been IPX, NetBUEI, or Appletalk (ok, probably not Appletalk)


    That's the part I don't get...it's very likely that at least one of these was used since it was DOS-based, but  none of those (IIRC) are routable so they would not work over the internet.
  • (cs) in reply to pjabbott

    Hmm, so he already had a printout of the AUTOEXEC.BAT... step one of the wooden table approach: "check".



  • hyfe (unregistered) in reply to pjabbott
    pjabbott:
    Anonymous:
    The LAN probably wasn't TCP/IP based; Running off on DOS it may have been IPX, NetBUEI, or Appletalk (ok, probably not Appletalk)


    That's the part I don't get...it's very likely that at least one of these was used since it was DOS-based, but  none of those (IIRC) are routable so they would not work over the internet.
    The introduction does mention having several NIC's in each computer. That mess may be insanity, but each single step leading there might have been reasonably sane.. and as long as stuff was working, why change?

    Too many of the posters here are probably too young to remember ipx and the ilk anyways :(

  • (cs)

    This is quite an enterprisey wtf indeed but on the other hand I'd like to congratulate the insurance company for their professional behaviour on this issue. It's not easy to admit that you were mislead for ten years, let alone giving out money to set things right..

  • Forgottenlord (unregistered) in reply to wyz
    Anonymous:

    He accomplished this in ten year's for a small insurance agency.

    One probably cannot begin to imagine what the local university network is like after ten years with this kind of administration!!!!

     

    capthca: pacman ( Hated that annoying woka-woka noise!)

    As a University Student, I can't say I would be truly shocked by him working there

  • (cs) in reply to biziclop
    biziclop:
    This is quite an enterprisey wtf indeed but on the other hand I'd like to congratulate the insurance company for their professional behaviour on this issue. It's not easy to admit that you were mislead for ten years, let alone giving out money to set things right..

    It doesn't sound like they were misled, it sounds like the network just accreted for ten years without an overall design plan.

  • l1fel1ne (unregistered)

    Reminds me of the sysadmin at a previous job. He got the hot idea of crimping RJ45 jacks onto cat 3 cable (yes, regular untwisted phone cable) when doing the office wiring....

  • (cs) in reply to Looce
    Anonymous:
    snoofle:
    Going to the internet to ping a box on a local network? Now THAT's enterprise-y!

    By going to the internet, I assume you mean taking a picture of the phone wire (on a wooden table), ...

    Let's finish that, shall we?

    By going to the Internet, I assume you mean taking a picture of the phone wire, on a wooden table, printing it out, then scanning it back and using OCR on the resulting image to extract the data from the wire.

    The real WTF (tm) is that you can read the information from the wire. I mean, that's a huge security hole right there.

    captcha = null

    Just wondering... given today's equipment, if you had a 'scanner' with a sufficiently sensitive ammeter, and you ran a phone line carrying a 28.8K connection through the middle, could it 'see' the electromagnetic impulses, errr, bits, as they passed by?

    If so, imagine the possibilities - Joe Hacker, climbs a utility pole, puts a portable ammeter + wireless transmitter on phone wire, then sits in car below and snoops... Given how small stuff is today, it might not even be noticed...

    Grrrr - stuck at home with 3 sick kids for a week - if I hear one more kid *snoof*, I'm, going to run amuck $*#&%@ !!!

     

     

  • Jersey (unregistered) in reply to Forgottenlord
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    He accomplished this in ten year's for a small insurance agency.

    One probably cannot begin to imagine what the local university network is like after ten years with this kind of administration!!!!

     

    capthca: pacman ( Hated that annoying woka-woka noise!)

    As a University Student, I can't say I would be truly shocked by him working there

     

    <FONT face=Arial>Exactly my thought. Some of the professors are too old-school and don't really realize that teaching students ONLY what THEY know and not allowing them to explore and use new things will make things like this happen. But then again... Maybe he did it on purpose to screw the company over for all those years of being underpaid and underappreciated and whose skills were abused. High-school kids with a lot more experience than the average and not a lot of prospects to land a technical job... Well, it's possible.</FONT>

  • (cs)

    So, the only way for me to get from my living room to my kitchen is to:

      Go out the unlocked front door,

      Drive out of my neighborhood into the adjoining big city,

      Drive back to my neighborhood (probably on different roads, but maybe not),

      Walk in through my unlocked front door,

      And into the kitchen (meeting a huge crowd of people)?

  • (cs) in reply to cconroy

    cconroy:
    Hmm, so he already had a printout of the AUTOEXEC.BAT... step one of the wooden table approach: "check".



    Step two is to photograph the printout on the wooden table...

  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:

    So, the only way for me to get from my living room to my kitchen is to:

      Go out the unlocked front door,

      Drive out of my neighborhood into the adjoining big city,

      Drive back to my neighborhood (probably on different roads, but maybe not),

      Walk in through my unlocked front door,

      And into the kitchen (meeting a huge crowd of people)?



    "Have unprotected sex with a prostitute" should be in the middle there somewhere.
  • (cs)

    Anonymous:
    Al Gore got a really bad rap. Have you ever actually seen his remark in context? At worst, mispoke somewhat, but it was clear what he meant and, truthfully, he really did take the initiative is shaping the Internet that we see today.


    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/wired-owes-al-gore-an-apo_b_19980.html

    When I was working for a large Communications equipment manufacturer who made ATM switches that are at the core of the Internet, I would remind people that;

    <FONT size=5>all Internet traffic is shaped and passed by mathematical Al-Gore-Rythms !</FONT>

  • l33t (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT

    Gore put the G in G-mail

  • (cs) in reply to mare
    mare:
    That actually sounds pretty familliar. It sort of remindes of how my mother described the situation at  the company she works for. And I'm starting to work there as well, in a couple of days. A holiday job, helping their admins... Already looking forward to it...

    Please send the most serious WTF to Alex then!
  • (cs) in reply to Hubert Farnsworth

    Hubert Farnsworth:
    mare:
    That actually sounds pretty familliar. It sort of remindes of how my mother described the situation at  the company she works for. And I'm starting to work there as well, in a couple of days. A holiday job, helping their admins... Already looking forward to it...

    Please send the most serious WTF to Alex then!

    Um, respectfully, screw 'serious' - I vote for the most entertaining !!!

  • (cs) in reply to John Bigboote
    John Bigboote:
    ParkinT:

    So, the only way for me to get from my living room to my kitchen is to:

      Go out the unlocked front door,

      Drive out of my neighborhood into the adjoining big city,

      Drive back to my neighborhood (probably on different roads, but maybe not),

      Walk in through my unlocked front door,

      And into the kitchen (meeting a huge crowd of people)?



    "Have unprotected sex with a prostitute" should be in the middle there somewhere.

    <FONT face=Tahoma>And when you got home, it might get "deleted" when the virus is detected...



    </FONT>
  • (cs) in reply to Hubert Farnsworth

    Hubert Farnsworth:
    mare:
    That actually sounds pretty familliar. It sort of remindes of how my mother described the situation at  the company she works for. And I'm starting to work there as well, in a couple of days. A holiday job, helping their admins... Already looking forward to it...

    Please send the most serious WTF to Alex then!

    Um, respectfully, screw 'serious' - I vote for the most entertaining!!!

     

    edit - Aiiieeeee - double post - *withdrawn*

     

  • (cs)
    Anonymous:


    The REAL wtf is that this guy uses <font> tags...


    That's so Web 0.8
  • (cs)

    The solution is obvious. Take a scan of the hard copy of the autoexec.bat file, and use a text-recognition program to convert that scan to text. Then just paste it into the autoexec.bat file, put it on a new floppy, and everything will go perfectly smoothly.

  • Poor sod (unregistered) in reply to John

    This is the submitter. It actually was an IP-based network.

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:

    Hubert Farnsworth:
    mare:
    That actually sounds pretty familliar. It sort of remindes of how my mother described the situation at  the company she works for. And I'm starting to work there as well, in a couple of days. A holiday job, helping their admins... Already looking forward to it...

    Please send the most serious WTF to Alex then!

    Um, respectfully, screw 'serious' - I vote for the most entertaining !!!


    Fine with me :-D

Leave a comment on “That's What the Internet Is For”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article