The Further Adventures of Billy Chippo

Trying to be Helpful

While on my way to the coffee machine this morning, I pass the Technical Support manager’s office, and I notice that he’s looking particularly glum. I pop in to find out what’s wrong.

“It’s this new outsourcing deal, Billy. It means I’m losing all my experienced contractors who know exactly what to do and don’t mind getting on a plane at a moment’s notice and flying off to Timbuktu to fix things. Instead there are going to be these outsourcing drones who won’t do anything without explicit written instructions.”
“Can’t you retain a couple of contractors just for incident response?”
“I’m not allowed to. The boss wants all the responsibilities transferred and all the contractors out.”
“Can’t you persuade him out of it?”
“I’ve tried, but it’s no-go. I just haven’t been able to prove the necessity. If you can come up with a way of showing that we need those contractors then please do.”
“I’ll think about it.”

I ponder the matter for the rest of the day. Finally it dawns on me that what we need is a nice big international incident to demonstrate the technical prowess of our contractors and show up the shortcomings of the drones. Naturally, I’m always one to be helpful, so I immediately decide that it will have to be my responsibility to engineer it. In fact this must be what the Technical Support manager meant when he said that if I can come up with a way of showing that we need the contractors then I should do it. Of course it must.

For a moment I consider whether I should check back with him about whether this is what he had in mind. But then I realise that it would be best if he didn’t know, since he’ll need to be able to deny all knowledge.

Back at my desk, I get some really strong coffee and set to work. First I’ll need to choose which of our overseas offices to target. After some thought I settle on Morocco. It’s a large and significant site, but most importantly it has a local system administrator who’s not as sharp as he might be. You all know the adage, “To err is human, but it takes a computer to foul things up completely.” Well in my book there’s nothing like an incompetent system administrator for getting the best of both worlds.

Now I need a plan of attack. I don’t have administrator rights in the overseas offices, and in any case I wouldn’t want to use my own account for this stuff. So I’ll need a more stealthy approach. The Morocco office Internet connection comes through our central network and out through our firewall so I do a quick check through the logs to see which websites are popular with the sysadmin. He seems to be a regular visitor to Slashdot, so I run up a quick spoof site and embed some code that exploits the MSScriptControl to write a Windows shellscript to his startup group. Then I add an entry to our DNS file to redirect Slashdot to my site. The next time he visits the site he’ll install the script, and the next time he logs in after that, the script will run and copy a few hacked versions of Windows system files onto his hard disk. One more reboot and he’ll be running my own customised version of Windows that will allow me full remote control, undetected by the antivirus software.

Three days later and I’m in business. I wait until my victim has gone home for the night, then I take over for my own special version of the evening shift. I make a start with the mail server, deleting half the mail documents, and shuffling the rest round into random accounts. Then I move onto the database server and change the passwords on a selection of the most critical tables. Next I overwrite the system library files on all the servers with a mixture of different file versions. As a final touch I uninstall the service that operates the UPS, just for good measure. After that I head off home with the warm feeling of a job well done.

Next morning there seems to be a lot of frantic activity. Sysadmin staff running around, people disappearing into meetings, long heated telephone calls. My plan has obviously worked. Later in the day I pay a visit to the Technical Support manager so that we can congratulate each other on a successful mission. To my surprise, he’s looking decidedly morose, and emptying the contents of his desk into a black plastic sack. I give him a cheerful smile and ask what’s going on.

“I’ve been fired, Billy.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Afraid not. There was a disaster this morning in one of the overseas offices.”
“Morocco?”
“How did you know that?”
“Oh, just heard a rumour. But surely that wasn’t your fault.”
“No, but the boss has been bawled out over it, and he’s made me the scapegoat.”
“Couldn’t you just get one of the contractors to fix it and save the day?”
“The contractors all finished their contracts yesterday.”
“Ah.”
“And the outsourcing suppliers didn’t know what to do.”
“Oh.”
“And in any case the outsourcing contract doesn’t cover what appears to be malicious damage by an insider.”
“Um.”

There is an awkward pause during which he looks at me suspiciously.

“Well, look on the bright side. You were thinking of retiring early.”
“Not this early, Billy.”
I’m starting to feel a little uncomfortable now, so I decide to make an exit. Poor chap. Still, c’est la guerre.

Later as I’m leaving to go home, I step out of the lift and a sheet of plate glass comes crashing down and misses me by an inch. I turn and look up, but there’s nobody there, just the sound of footsteps in the distance. I suppose it must be just a coincidence. Of course it must.