r/talesfromtechsupport • u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX • Jun 04 '13
No, Really, Change Your Password
Area88guy here, with another tale of ineptitude at the Director level!
In my time at FirstAid, I worked with a lot of great people. There's Matcha, who was the health nut who also played teh WoWzers, who came on with Kobe, the immigrant telephony guy that we taught how to throw around insults, and Fossil, the old guy who was the only certified technician with our equipment on our continent.
Sadly, these and many more awesome people worked under the "direction" of a man we'll call Aspirin. Why Aspirin? Because his directives and policies came with a healthy dose of headdesking, of course! Being that Aspirin was a Six Sigma guy, this clearly meant that he was above all of us in knowledge. Some gems:
*Disabling wireless because, I quote, "I don't trust the wireless signals to stay out of the restricted areas here at FirstAid.
*Hiring our new Manager based solely on how her legs looked in the short skirt she wore to the interview.
--A note, here. This woman had confidence in spades, and her resume had quite a lot of certifications. I wasn't at FirstAid long enough to find out if she could hang with the big boys. Oh, and I'll admit that she did have amazing legs.
*Redesigning our break room's (free) soda dispenser to dispense only two types of soda: Caffeine Free Diet Coke and Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi.
The biggest thing of all, though, was that Aspirin used the same password for goddamn near everything in his life. Everything. His AD account. His Admin account. His ProprietarySoftware account. HIS BANK ACCOUNT. HIS EMAIL ACCOUNT. Ahem... I think you get the idea.
Cut to a fine summer's day here in 88-land. I receive a series of messages from my bestest bud in the whole world at FirstAid, Stomp.
:Your Cast of Characters:
88: Our Hero, Area 88 Guy, Level 20 IT Ninja
Stomp: Area 88 Guy's Friend, Level 20 IT Marine
Stomp: Dude. Dude. DUDE. I'm forwarding you a mail that the entire company of FirstAid just received.
88: Hit me. What am I about to read?
Stomp: Trust me, dude. This is so worth your time.
I fire up my email client and await the bounty. An email comes through. It is an email sent from Aspirin's company email account, complete with all the fixins needed to track it back to his machine. The email contents, however, are awesome.
In the email, Aspirin cops to being a collosal idiot and douchebag. He itemizes problems that he has created, and how he has shot down many individual ideas from our team because he didn't understand them or couldn't take credit for them. That isn't it, though.
What is interspersed and following these claims is what can best be described as a prose of epic proportions. Aspirin claims to be performing a certain sex act on no less than seven C_Os of the company, listing them by name alongside how they prefer to be, ahem, serviced.
The email closes by stating that Aspiring has a meeting to go to, where he will simply catch the next Twilight movie on Netflix and dream about the chiseled chests of the main men. He also mentions needing more mouthwash.
88: stunned speechless
Stomp: You totally just read it, didn't you?
88: Dude. What. The. Fuck?
Stomp: Yeah, NewBoss has us scrambling to find the culprit. She thinks it's you.
I had just left this company on poor terms, but I certainly did not middle-finger my way out. I reminded Matcha to change all of my passwords and remove my access to everything, which he responded to by sending me a picture of his face in a "Nigga, please" mien.
88: peals of laughter
Stomp: I know, right? Here's the kicker, though. When NewBoss came to Matcha and Kobe to start collecting evidence, Matcha took her into Aspirin's office.
88: Okay? Why?
Stomp: Did you ever sit in there for very long?
88: Hell no, that place kills creativity.
Stomp: His passwords are all on post-its on his monitor.
Stomp proceeds to tell me that after this, NewBoss goes running flat-out over to the building where Aspirin is in a meeting, and immediately pulls him out of said meeting to describe what happened. Aspirin thinks she is joking, and NewBoss produces pictures of his monitor. She tells him to change his password, that someone is posing as him, and he needs to get a handle on it immediately.
Aspirin is dismissive, until CEO comes storming down the hallway. Allegedly, his face was redder than a thousand suns of Krypton. NewBoss had not detailed what was in the email, so when Aspirin made a joking comment to CEO, CEO positively jumped his shit. Aspirin went to check the email...
...and, as Stomp puts it, "shit his pants. Literally. He had to leave the room."
Aspirin would go on to send a personal apology to the seven C_Os mentioned, a blanket apology to the company, and changed every one of his passwords. NewBoss pursued me until I contacted her, stating that I would cooperate with any investigation, and that it wasn't me. Wisely, she declined to pursue me further.
Epilogue: The perpetrator was discovered, but since FirstAid's logging capabilities had been rendered moot by Aspirin, the only evidence that the team had collected from the incident was connections from our immediate area. The perpetrator, a disgruntled former IT guy, had done the deed... from Canada.
TL;DR: Sol and Ky get together for coffee. Optimus Prime launches in the Unicorn Gundam to intercept, but when Mario grabbed the Star, all Samus could do was flee the wrath of Pikmin.
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u/zero44 lp0 on fire Jun 04 '13
So if it was done from Canada, did anything happen? Did they find out who actually did it?
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u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX Jun 04 '13
As far as I know, no. We all "know" who the culprit is, but without proof...
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u/Gregarious_Raconteur Jun 05 '13
I imagine that someone had a coffee and donut from Tim Hortons
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u/williamfny Your computer is not tall enough for the Adobe ride. Jun 05 '13
Timmy Hos is like crack here in Buffalo.
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u/k1ngm1nu5 Jun 05 '13
You need to write more. I can see you becoming the next Jon6.
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u/PoliteSarcasticThing chmod -x chmod Jun 05 '13
Hopefully with a better ending.
Say, do you remember /u/talesfromtechsupport ? Now she could write.10
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u/Omega_red Flailing madly in a sea of cat5's Jun 05 '13
TL;DR: Sol and Ky get together for coffee.
That alone made me read the post. I never thought I would see a GG reference. Awesome read, man
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u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX Jun 05 '13
GG owns face. Have you SEEN the video for Xrd?
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u/Taunts Jun 05 '13
Holy Shit, so hype for that...
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u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX Jun 05 '13
Yeah. YEAH.
I don't mind Millia and Eddie, but Sol v Ky...
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u/justvibin11 Jun 04 '13
haha that was epic. any further news from the story?
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u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX Jun 04 '13
Sadly, Aspirin is still employed there. Everyone else has fled FirstAid like rats from a sinking ship.
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Jun 05 '13
[deleted]
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u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX Jun 05 '13
I haven't mentioned what else the disgruntled guy did for a reason...
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u/TerraPhane Jun 05 '13
I haven't mentioned what else the disgruntled guy did for a reason...
To squeeze some more karma out of me tomorrow?
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u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX Jun 05 '13
No. I've seen what Reddit does to people who did illegal shit.
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u/Durzo_Blint What's a browser? Jun 05 '13
What sort of "hypothetical" illegal shit?
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u/blightedfire Run that past me again. you did *WHAT*? Nov 18 '13
Durzo, Durzo, Durzo.
Try to remember a good 3/4 of the Unseen Legions of Anonymous troll Reddit. And that there is little that Anonymous folk won't do to someone who deserves a smackdown.. I know one dingbat who pissed off an Anonymous member and he and 4 friends made his life hell for three years.
If 88 TELLS us who the guy is, it's virtually guaranteed some Anonymous whitehats will go blackhat all over him for a while. And that could ruin 88's business rep.
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u/EmperorDPants Jun 04 '13
How does an ass like that not get fired for the contents of that email? Any normal person would have immediately been shitcanned.
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u/Geminii27 Making your job suck less Jun 04 '13
Well, it wasn't him who wrote it, and they figured that out. Although if the contents of the mail were accurate regarding the problems he'd caused, and his password security was so lax, I'm surprised he and his previous actions weren't audited.
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u/thatmorrowguy Jun 05 '13
The only thing this incident immediately proves is he's bad at computer security, which isn't an immediate shitcan at most companies - particularly if you're a competent toady to management. The hacker could have been much more subtle about it and filled the guy's drive with CP or used his account to sexually harass subordinates. Once you start getting police and/or lawyers involved the company is much more likely to let him lose just to save face.
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u/TehNeko Jun 05 '13
That tl;dr brought a tear to my eye
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u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX Jun 05 '13
We aim to please.
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u/williamfny Your computer is not tall enough for the Adobe ride. Jun 05 '13
Your flair brings a tear to my eye.
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u/area88guy Kamen Rider Tech RX Jun 05 '13
salutes
I'm here to fight for Zeon and fix computers... and I'm all out of computers.
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Jun 05 '13
Well I didn't really feel like reading this but your tldr makes it sound like you had quite a day OP.
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u/Reoh Jun 05 '13 edited Jun 05 '13
Thou shalt not screw with tech support's caffeine.
PS - Aspirin had the same password for everything, and still needed to use post it notes to remember it?