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SICKNESS,
HORROR, AND DEATH
In Observance of
Halloween: October 1999
True
Stories of Computer Illness and Death at Hale and Elsewhere
Like a policeman on a beat, I see more
that the usual amount of bad behavior from my clients (in my case,
machinery). Here is a view from the
trenches. (NOTE: No disrespect is implied by
any of these stories. The people
involved are our esteemed staff (and others!), who have found themselves in
unforeseen compromising situations.
However, perhaps we can all learn from their fate!) Read it and weep. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A teacher calls me at home one summer
day in great distress. He has worked
on his computer for years building a huge collection of tools which he uses
for his teaching. Now the computer
has suddenly refused to boot. As I
listen to his story, I realize that there's little hope of recovery. He hires a private computing professional
to come look at it. We compare notes
over the phone. The machines turns
out to be deader than a doornail.
Nothing was backed up. Years
of work is lost. EPILOGUE: This person buys another computer which is
more capable than his old LC and gets so interested in it, he becomes an
enthusiast of sorts. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A teacher comes to me desperate
for help. Her grade reports are due
tomorrow and her computer won't work.
Nothing is backed up. After a
couple of hours, I manage to recover her data. She is delighted. She
promises to use FoolProof religiously.
She does this blessed sacrament without fail and has no problem for a
year. Her regular observances are
interrupted however when an apostate substitute takes over for a couple of
days and does not perform the FoolProof ritual. The teacher, now back from her illness comes to me, again
desperate. Nothing is backed up, and
her computer is dead. I arrive to
find the guts of the operating system neatly splayed out onto the
desktop. Three hours later(!!!), with
the installation of new hardware and software, her data is recovered. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A
student TA sitting in the Mac Lab logs onto a teacher's machine on the other
side of the school. He can see that
the teacher has left his grade machine open.
He improves the grade of one of his friends. The teacher, being as sharp as a tack, notices the discrepancy
immediately. The tech person puts about 5 hours (!!!) into tracking
down the student. The principal does
the rest, and the culprit is caught. NOTE: this networking system has
been disabled. MORAL: Don't do more networking of sensitive machines that is
necessary and observe proper security protocols on such machines. Don't leave your grade software open if
you aren't using it. Don't allow
students on computers which run eClass or Grade Machine. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A teacher is using his Grade
Machine program when a student walks by and accidentally kicks the plug from the wall. The computer dies and takes all the data
from that class to the land of the Dead... ie., the class data is
corrupted. The teacher has the data
backed up and can simply reenter it. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A new secretary at a large
computer manufacturer sent her boss an email like this: I like my new job, everyone is so
helpful, thank you. Working here for you will be really fun. The boss replies with an
inappropriate message commenting on the secretary’s physical
attractiveness. He goofs on the reply
function and sends the message to each of several thousand employees in the
company. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A teacher (not at Hale), has her
account hacked into. It turns out
that one of her students is particularly adept at watching fingers on
keyboards. He sells teachers' passwords
to willing students for profit. MORAL: none of us should be bashful
about asking others to look away when we type our passwords. It's best to practice typing your password
quickly with a syncopated rhythm. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A male Hale student writes an
email letter to a female student stating that he is bursting with love
(actually his words were slightly different) for her and can no longer
contain himself. The two students
meet in person and establish that he never wrote the letter. Further investigation reveals that our
server has been hacked. The hacker
can write a letter from any person on our student server to anyone on the
Internet, and make it appear that the account holder has said anything the
hacker writes. NOTE: This server had an insecure
password system in the context of today's powerful number-crunching computers
available for hacking. It was consequently retired from service. MORAL: Don't use insecure
servers. Keep passwords as secure as
possible. Follow good password
creation rules. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A computer hacker has gained
access to our hale email server from the East Coast via a staff person's
account. He has the audacity to do a
live chat session with me (where we can watch each other type out our
messages in real time). When I tell
him I'm aware of his identity as a hacker, he tries to deny it. Telling him that I'm tracing his
whereabouts, I finally get him to get off .
The account is deleted. A look
at log files shows that he tried numerous attempts to get onto other peoples'
accounts.... and failed repeatedly. MORAL: A good password is an essential line of defense for protecting
our server against such unscrupulous individuals. He got one, but failed over and over to get others. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A very distraught student hands me
a disk. It contains the only copy of
a paper she has worked on for hours.
It's completely dead. I run
scandisk. I run Disk First Aid. I run Norton's . Nothing can bring this data back to life; it's gone
forever. This drama repeats itself
about every two weeks. Sometimes the
main character is a student, sometimes it's a teacher. I usually play the role of undertaker. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A female student complains that a
male student colleague is using a computer on the Internet one Saturday
afternoon to look at pornography.
Pulling up the Netscape cached images, I see numbers of naked female
forms originally viewed at a time corresponding to the female student’s
reports. The male student is suspended. MORAL: Have a filter (like Bess) or do not allow unattended students
on the Internet. ADDENDUM: Have a way to turn the
filter off so people can do legitimate research effectively. We don't have this with Bess, despite many
requests. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Standing next to a computer in the
lab, it suddenly lets out a horrendous screeching sound and the screen
vibrates wildly with jagged black and white shapes. Then it dies. No
warning. No one using it.... its time
is just up. Whatever is on there is
gone forever, if it isn't backed up. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ An ex-student TA from the Mac Lab
tells the tech guy, "Just a moment, I have to go check something on my
disk". The tech guy, by now
suspicious of this person, follows the student quietly to the server. The student quickly inserts the disk. Immediately, alarms go off all over the
computer! The virus detector has
determined that this disk is attempting to insert the DOOM2 virus on our
server. MORAL: always have a virus checker
on your computer - especially if it is a new Mac, or a PC of any
vintage. Test student disks before
inserting them into computers.
Norton's Anti-virus costs between $9 and $16. Your old Mac, does have primitive virus
detecting software. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A Hale teacher receives a letter
from someone proclaiming that he is an administration official and needs this
person's email account password. The
teacher gives out the password. The
system admin finds out and immediately destroys this person's account. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ A Hale teacher angers a Hale
student. That student goes to the
public library and attempts to hack into the teacher's account. Since she has a good password, he is
unable to do so. Instead, he sends
her about 300 weird letters. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Waves of viruses sweep through
Nathan Hale High School computers. Those
machines without virus detection software catch it immediately. The source is the business lab server
where someone has hacked into the file system and made accounts which contain
viruses. They keep re-infecting files
over and over again. The NT administrator
spends many, many hours (!!) trying to track down and eliminate this disease. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Someone gains entry into a locked
office at night and puts shaving cream into a teacher's desktop computer. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Wisdom Summary: Sickness, Horror and Death, The Cliff
Notes Version
o Back stuff up! o No legitimate person will ever ask you for your email account
password via email. o Always have backups. Use
new disks to save important things. o Always save important things in two places. o A good password is an essential line of defense for protecting
our server against such unscrupulous individuals. Always(!) adhere to good password rules. o None of us should be bashful about asking others to look away
when we type our passwords. o It's best to learn to type your password quickly with a
syncopated rhythm. o Use FoolProof. Don't
give your FoolProof password others. o Always have a virus checker on your computer - especially if it
is a new Mac, or a PC of any vintage. o If you press r to reply to a message, always look at the
TO: and CC: fields before sending the
message to see exactly who will receive it. o Unattended access to computers puts them at risk. |
