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managed to wheedle out this legendary IT war story from somebody and this is too good not to share semi-anonymously.
minor heads up for channer/greentext/crude language since this is unmodified other than formatting.
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Fifteen years ago, I knew an IT guy who once got asked to repair a server. He told me this story.
During the work, he found out the wall next to the server was a bricked over room.
Curiosity ensues.
So gets a hammer and finds out said bricks are actually cardboard painted over with a brick theme. He removes fake wall.
Finds computer from the 80s with a note that says "Pay me more or fuck you Steve, I am gonna quit. Hope it all comes crashing down without me." in text that became nearly invisible due to age.
Looks at still working and blinking ancient ass old PC (back then the towers lay horizontally on the table),
goes around, finds a keyboard no mouse,
starts posting a thread on Reddit on his smartphone how the fuck to control this thing via keyboard,
posts the image of the PC but forgets to post the image of the note,
1000+ replies within hour ensues,
gets told by retiring 60+ year old programmer how to do what on it,
offlines said PC,
suddenly, 500.000 people without Megabit internet in the city
FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK ensues
starts doing live chat screaming on the Reddit thread,
gets told how to start up the PC,
internet still not working even after PC gets working,
old IT fucker that is retiring listens, and gets very curious how and why it cant work,
60+ years Old Fucker has too much free time on his hands,
is still no married and has no kids,
and therefore has too much money on his hands,
EMPHASIS: Too much money and boredom.
so he calls the 11 other most active posters in the thread that he will pay their air tickets to get to the city our stories protagonist is in,
two of the posters are from Japan,
one from India,
...there is like one other American who will be going by car at Need For Speed levels to get there in time, otherwise the rest go by air,
Old Fucker organizing this Netwatch Emergency Rescue Team is Br*tish and later it is learned worked on digital integration for NATO in the early 80s,
Back in the city, no one in the city knows what is happening and why internet is down, ISP are helpless, no one know what or who or how it got cause,
meanwhile, our protag is told by Old Fucker that a dozen IT dudes from around world will arrive close to midnight,
protag IT in the mean time re-plasters over the fake wall and makes it look like nothing happened,
5 minutes later boss calls and tells him job is cancelled because no internet in the city,
he goes to a café next door and tries to relax (but inside is screaming),
Near midnight the our Heroic team of Netrunners arrive there to fix the Data Krash.
The local street suddenly has their IQ jump by 50 points at least.
Half of them are other old fucks who prolly worked on COBOL programming for their respective militaries or university systems, the one other American is ex-DoE.
Four are over 50, then our Old Fucker at 62 and the last one is even over 70 (ex-DoE), while the rest is 25 and less with the youngest being two twins from Japan.
Every single one bring a full cross-country bag or travel case brim full with their tools. From miniature server racks made off dozens of Pi-comps to hundreds of meters of ethernet cable to special scissors and drills to cut through walls. The works.
Team gets to work.
Figures out the problem is that the program that was managing whatever that was preventing a net shutdown was not even saved on the hard-drive in that old PC but continuously run on the RAM.
256 KB of RAM, to be precise.
WTF by everyone.
Finally, our protag remembers something, and shows everyone the note.
The 4chan twins start quickly talking between each other in Japanese. No one understands.
One finally asks how would you make a internet boobytrap that shuts down the local network.
The South African realizes they are talking about a Rube Goldberg Device mine. Something that is very difficult to reverse engineer.
Cue 60 minutes of successful brainstorming session that would be impossible if even one member was missing from this team. Everyone contributed.
From the size of the old memory, they figured out what probably was going on in the network,
They write a program for it.
Go for overkill solution and set up a new Pi-comp microserver replacing Ass Old PC and start setting it all up.
Rest of the team goes drilling and cutting walls to find Ethernet connections to connect to replace Dial-ups in the ass-old PC.
Complete rewire and re-deploy the local buildings network, put in new routers and switches to manage the connections.
Start up everything, 95 percent of people get internet back. The rest does not.
Not good enough.
It is 0900am next day.
Who the fuck is the other 5 percent not working.
The one Indian comes with a crazy solution.
Uses Indian Telephone Online Scam MAGIC bullshit tools to doxfind contacts to call EVERYONE on those last 5 percent of not working internet.
It is several big old company buildings using COBOL-coded network systems that and while they can connect to the Pi Micro-server they don't accept signals from outside that connection, so they are stuck with zero wider net access....uh oh.
The Team: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK COBOL!!!
The one queer Russian hacker aske if it would be possible to hack those COBOL routers, damage them and force the companies to replace them for newer shit.
They go down to business and get the Indian to Scam Bullshit the companies that something is wrong with their routers (without indicating our Protag is responsible) to force them to upgrade their network systems to modern standards.
Indian dude hams it up to 11 the several buildings service teams on what they need to do like some AWESOME version of the Indian Online Call Scam, he literally talked to multiple people at the same time through voice chat whiteout any of them being wiser that there are more people than them.
Then the Ex-USDoE then goes "fuck this shit, if the old boys knew what I am about to do, they would shoot me out of a canon", brings out old textbook with weeny-tiny scribbled notes on the physically net-separated COBOL-coded intranet-systems for the older US nuclear power plants (that he was explicitly ordered to burn after leaving his job) and guides the Slavic transexual through on what needs to be done.
Russian writes up a fucking Assembler-coded Stuxnet-like virus.
What follows is the above mentioned ass old COBOL routers in those companies getting STUXNETed into melting down in a spray of fire and arcing electricity (they learn this later) and then get promptly replaced within half an hour because the companies that had them were lazy and greedy and stupid and still had the money for very quick modern replacement (the people working there probably finally released a sigh of relief that they no longer have to deal with the old shitty routers). No one there knows what happened because the Indian guy bullshited in such a way they were still dazed in the evening and will forget it by next day.
Finally, the network got fixed, our protag went home to sleep for a week and Netwatcch Team went their seperate ways.
Happy End.
-------------------------------
minor heads up for channer/greentext/crude language since this is unmodified other than formatting.
--------------------
--------------------
Fifteen years ago, I knew an IT guy who once got asked to repair a server. He told me this story.
During the work, he found out the wall next to the server was a bricked over room.
Curiosity ensues.
So gets a hammer and finds out said bricks are actually cardboard painted over with a brick theme. He removes fake wall.
Finds computer from the 80s with a note that says "Pay me more or fuck you Steve, I am gonna quit. Hope it all comes crashing down without me." in text that became nearly invisible due to age.
Looks at still working and blinking ancient ass old PC (back then the towers lay horizontally on the table),
goes around, finds a keyboard no mouse,
starts posting a thread on Reddit on his smartphone how the fuck to control this thing via keyboard,
posts the image of the PC but forgets to post the image of the note,
1000+ replies within hour ensues,
gets told by retiring 60+ year old programmer how to do what on it,
offlines said PC,
suddenly, 500.000 people without Megabit internet in the city
FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK ensues
starts doing live chat screaming on the Reddit thread,
gets told how to start up the PC,
internet still not working even after PC gets working,
old IT fucker that is retiring listens, and gets very curious how and why it cant work,
60+ years Old Fucker has too much free time on his hands,
is still no married and has no kids,
and therefore has too much money on his hands,
EMPHASIS: Too much money and boredom.
so he calls the 11 other most active posters in the thread that he will pay their air tickets to get to the city our stories protagonist is in,
two of the posters are from Japan,
one from India,
...there is like one other American who will be going by car at Need For Speed levels to get there in time, otherwise the rest go by air,
Old Fucker organizing this Netwatch Emergency Rescue Team is Br*tish and later it is learned worked on digital integration for NATO in the early 80s,
Back in the city, no one in the city knows what is happening and why internet is down, ISP are helpless, no one know what or who or how it got cause,
meanwhile, our protag is told by Old Fucker that a dozen IT dudes from around world will arrive close to midnight,
protag IT in the mean time re-plasters over the fake wall and makes it look like nothing happened,
5 minutes later boss calls and tells him job is cancelled because no internet in the city,
he goes to a café next door and tries to relax (but inside is screaming),
Near midnight the our Heroic team of Netrunners arrive there to fix the Data Krash.
The local street suddenly has their IQ jump by 50 points at least.
Half of them are other old fucks who prolly worked on COBOL programming for their respective militaries or university systems, the one other American is ex-DoE.
Four are over 50, then our Old Fucker at 62 and the last one is even over 70 (ex-DoE), while the rest is 25 and less with the youngest being two twins from Japan.
Every single one bring a full cross-country bag or travel case brim full with their tools. From miniature server racks made off dozens of Pi-comps to hundreds of meters of ethernet cable to special scissors and drills to cut through walls. The works.
Team gets to work.
Figures out the problem is that the program that was managing whatever that was preventing a net shutdown was not even saved on the hard-drive in that old PC but continuously run on the RAM.
256 KB of RAM, to be precise.
WTF by everyone.
Finally, our protag remembers something, and shows everyone the note.
The 4chan twins start quickly talking between each other in Japanese. No one understands.
One finally asks how would you make a internet boobytrap that shuts down the local network.
The South African realizes they are talking about a Rube Goldberg Device mine. Something that is very difficult to reverse engineer.
Cue 60 minutes of successful brainstorming session that would be impossible if even one member was missing from this team. Everyone contributed.
From the size of the old memory, they figured out what probably was going on in the network,
They write a program for it.
Go for overkill solution and set up a new Pi-comp microserver replacing Ass Old PC and start setting it all up.
Rest of the team goes drilling and cutting walls to find Ethernet connections to connect to replace Dial-ups in the ass-old PC.
Complete rewire and re-deploy the local buildings network, put in new routers and switches to manage the connections.
Start up everything, 95 percent of people get internet back. The rest does not.
Not good enough.
It is 0900am next day.
Who the fuck is the other 5 percent not working.
The one Indian comes with a crazy solution.
Uses Indian Telephone Online Scam MAGIC bullshit tools to doxfind contacts to call EVERYONE on those last 5 percent of not working internet.
It is several big old company buildings using COBOL-coded network systems that and while they can connect to the Pi Micro-server they don't accept signals from outside that connection, so they are stuck with zero wider net access....uh oh.
The Team: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK COBOL!!!
The one queer Russian hacker aske if it would be possible to hack those COBOL routers, damage them and force the companies to replace them for newer shit.
They go down to business and get the Indian to Scam Bullshit the companies that something is wrong with their routers (without indicating our Protag is responsible) to force them to upgrade their network systems to modern standards.
Indian dude hams it up to 11 the several buildings service teams on what they need to do like some AWESOME version of the Indian Online Call Scam, he literally talked to multiple people at the same time through voice chat whiteout any of them being wiser that there are more people than them.
Then the Ex-USDoE then goes "fuck this shit, if the old boys knew what I am about to do, they would shoot me out of a canon", brings out old textbook with weeny-tiny scribbled notes on the physically net-separated COBOL-coded intranet-systems for the older US nuclear power plants (that he was explicitly ordered to burn after leaving his job) and guides the Slavic transexual through on what needs to be done.
Russian writes up a fucking Assembler-coded Stuxnet-like virus.
What follows is the above mentioned ass old COBOL routers in those companies getting STUXNETed into melting down in a spray of fire and arcing electricity (they learn this later) and then get promptly replaced within half an hour because the companies that had them were lazy and greedy and stupid and still had the money for very quick modern replacement (the people working there probably finally released a sigh of relief that they no longer have to deal with the old shitty routers). No one there knows what happened because the Indian guy bullshited in such a way they were still dazed in the evening and will forget it by next day.
Finally, the network got fixed, our protag went home to sleep for a week and Netwatcch Team went their seperate ways.
Happy End.
-------------------------------