Fun security thread

[volcanic]

I love my computer because it has never failed on me, it always works perfectly. So to my suprise one night when something happened, I almost had a heart attack.

My girlfriend was using it for homework and was complaining that it was acting screwy. I came to investigate. The screen was toggling between all of the open windows very very fast, causing the screen to flicker. I couldn't make it stop. I couldn't even (god help me) ctrl-alt-delete. I was getting frantic. In a leap of faith in my trusty computer I did a manual restart, only to find a keyboard failure?!?! What the hell? I started to piss my pants. It wouldn't even open grub (dual boot screen).

I had no idea what to do. I lay my head on the table for a second to ponder, closing my eyes. When I opened my eye I saw the most beautiful thing in the world. My girlfriends binder was laying across the enter key on the numeric key pad.

[michael737n]

One day (back when i still had dial-up) i was trying to download the mac os 9.2.2 update and i rushed through the prefs and accidentally set my computer up for web sharing w/o a pass and got hacked
ha ha im so funny

[omalakai]

Here is my most embarrassing story. It is not very security related, but it is fun!
I once worked at a small long-distance phone company as a junior IT tech guy. One day, there was a power blackout in the city. The company had its few servers on a central UPS. The UPS kicked in as it should, and we got through the blackout.
But then, when the city power came back on, the UPS (which wasn't used or tested or monitored or anything - it just sat in the back of the room, humming) didn't appear to stop supplying power. The bar graph on it kept ticking down, instead of stabilizing like it normally did when the city power worked.
It was an old UPS (I don't remember what model or manufacturer), and it had a large turn dial on the front to turn it on/off.
I was told, over the phone by a senior tech, to turn the dial to another position to see if it would stop discharging. Ok, sure, no problem.
Now, the dial had a handle with a little red triangle on one end, and the other end was about a foot long. Around this handle-dial, were various states of on/off/discharge/disconnect/etc. Many power states.
Now, I briefly looked at the handle, and I turned the long end (WITHOUT the red triangle) toward the OFF setting.
And the power shut off to every server in the building!

Yes, the red triangle is what pointed to what the UPS would do, not the long handle end! So, I managed to do what the blackout could not do, and that was bring down the office! I turned on a kill power mode that disconnects all power to the machines. Oops!

It was estimated that doing that only cost a few thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

But, they did not fire me over that! Accidents happen, they decided. I was STRONGLY told to make sure of what I am doing before I start turing dials and such.

[JattilaB]

Back a few years ago, I company bought a PC from us, I delivered it, set it up worked great, left with the check.

A few days later they called to say that the pc does not boot. I asked them what has changed, they answered that they moved the pc to the other end of the room.
So I thought Hmmm... I asked them to try another surge protector & make sure everything was plugged in fine. They did and said it still did not work. So I proceeded to g out there and check out the box for myself. When I got there I found that they had unplugged the pc and boxed it up for me to take back because the pc was a POS. I convinced them to let me try an trouble shoot the pc there just to eas both of our minds. So guess what! The pc worked just fine....

I put the pc back to the desk that they moved it to... and wola it was dead again...
Now they are mad! And I am smiling....

I told them it is there outlet.... they of course did not believe me until I took a light and plugged it in to the outlet and it did not work...
As it turns out the top plug of the outlet was bad....

The moral of this story!
Don’t laugh when someone tells you that the problem with the pc is ENVIROMENTAL....

[allenb1963]

OK...not tech related but more along the lines of PHYSICAL INSECURITY (the backhoe story reminded me of this).....

> > BRICKLAYER'S ACCIDENT REPORT
Possibly the funniest story in a while. This is a bricklayer's accident report, which was printed in the newsletter of the Australian equivalent of the Workers' Compensation board.

This is a true story. Had this guy died, he'd have received a Darwin Award for sure....

Dear Sir:
I am writing in response to your request for additional information in Block 3 of the accident report form. I put "poor planning" as the cause of my accident. You asked for a fuller explanation and I trust the following details will be sufficient.

I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the roof of a new six story building. When I completed my work, I found that I had some bricks left over which, when weighed later were found to be slightly in excess of 500 lbs. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley, which was attached to the side of the building on the sixth floor.

Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of the bricks. You will note in Block 11 of the accident report form that I weigh 175lbs. Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel which was now proceeding downward at an equal, impressive speed. This explained the fractured skull, minor abrasions and the broken collar bone, as listed in section 3 of the accident report form.

Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of beginning to experience a great deal of pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, that barrel weighed approximately 50 lbs. I refer you again to my weight.

As you can imagine, I began a rapid descent, down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and several lacerations of my legs and lower body. Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks, in pain, unable to move, I again lost my composure and presence of mind and let go of the rope and I lay there watching the empty barrel begin its journey back down onto me. This explains the two broken legs. I hope this answers your inquiry."

I know it's not tech related, but given the light-hearted ambiance of this thread I couldn't resist. Thanks gore!

[White_Eskimo]

stupidest (sp) thing i have ever done was call tech support when i was like 12 to ask how to turn on the damn Gameboy Color i had just bought. It was right when they just came out and i had never owned or seen one before. Anyways, i coulding find the damn on/off switch. I called the poor tech assistant and asked him how do you turn it on. He told me if was the button on the right and i had to move it to the ON position...Anyways, just a story that i look back on and i wish i actually took the extra time to stare in the manual. Well i was 12 and i really wanted to play WarrioLand

[|The|Specialist]

My toshiba notebook PC's touchpad got screwed. From what I hear its happened to many other peaple with the same make/model. Defect I guess? Anyways I been useing my parents computer. It isn't patched for RPC/dCOM vuln. and when it got Welchia they acted so ****ing surprised. Then came the questions... RPC dCOM what? Buffer overflows? Trojans? How did this stuff get on there? Then I kept teling them to patch and they said oh yeah of course we did. Yeah for some reason they thought that updateing their AV definitions would fix their RPC dCOM problems.

I almost hate peaple who think they know something... then come to me their problems. Im not a damn smart person... which unfortunetly shows how much stupider everyone else is. I wasn't really mad about Welchia its just the fact that they were tottaly clueless about it all and had no idea how lame they were.

The world is a sick 'n sad place

[Sm0kinP0t]

As someone very important (who's name i don't recall) once said:

We were all newbies one day.

I was one too. When i had my first contact with Win 3.1 e thought that i needed to clean some space and those silly icons with the silly window (dll) seemed to have no use, so i erased a couple of them. eheheheh

needless to say win crashed n wouldn't boot. S*** happens right?

[MrLinus]

|TheSpecialist|, that's why when you visit family, you wear this shirt: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/388b/

[gore]

Heh, yea, when I made this thread, I basically gave everyone the right to post whatever the hell they wanted and make it show up on the front page. Allen.....Dude Id pay HUGE for video to that lil mishap. I pissed myself laughing reading it...I think I'd go into shock if I was there when it happened. Thats one of the funniest things I think I'v ever read!

Also, for another funny story, I took some head sets from work. I am off tommorrow and so is my freind Chris. He is coming over and we are going to have a little fun with the people at work. Also I'll prolly mess around so that they can work at Mcdonalds and **** too. Should be fun, maybe I'll record some of it

Of course we wont be able to do this for long because more than likely the cops will be called. So I also made a sign, that I will be making more copies of, saying "Sing happy Birthday and get a free meal! Today only! -Management." Should be a fun day