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When getting settled in at RIT, the first thing the freshmen tend to realize is "sweet mother of pearls, the Internet connection here is bitchin' fast!" Yet in the beginning of September nobody's been really using the connection; there's still a grace period before the network gets slammed by the entire resident student body. Ken remembers when he plugged into the network for the first time. It was so fantastic that he didn't bother to finish unpacking. In fact, he was living off his first suitcase of clothes straight through the winter quarter. He wasn't the only one, it turns out, and the network soon got bogged down in warez and mp3z and pr0n. Most people don't care about this, but some folks do, and have the craziest methods of getting their point across.
Ken was having plenty of fun using the bandwidth for low-latency X windows sessions and nerd things like that. Most of the other students stayed busy downloading commercial music from the red-hot new filesharing service of the year. Napster started this all off, but it drifted to Kazaa, off to Direct Connect, and then on to God-knows-where. Of course, some folks still kept semi-public FTP servers up a la "The Good Old Days." Just a few of those servers hog up most of the bandwidth, so the administrators often knock them out. But it's always game of cat and mouse. If you're a good mouse, it just doesn't bother you.
Ken was often called upon to get files for his floormates. He wasn't a warez guy himself, but he knows a guy that sortof was. They had been introduced by Paul in the CS labs one time. It turns out this man was Paul's lab assistant for a computer science course freshman year. Ken remembered when he first met this guy. He was tall with dark brown skin and black hair . . . one whiff from his clothes admitted he was Indian. Oddly enough, his English was good. At least it was more tolerable than Ken's lisp. The guy's name was Kan . . . Kan Kadamasamaniamurinian. When you hear a name like that, you know you're talking to Ph.D quality people.
The meeting started out simple enough. Ken needed some help with his "advanced" Java programming, and Kan was an lab assistant for those courses. However, the conversation was a little lopsided. In summary, Ken would ask, "Is there any thide effects from using therialization on my own objects?" Kan would answer him with a question, "Would you mine keeping one of my servers plugged into the wall in your dorm?" It was obvious both parties came to this meeting with contrasting goals. Paul had to mediate.
"Um, Kan," he said, "Ken here needs help with his Java stuff."
"Tough, man; I'm not on shift." Kan told him, "Unless it's a simple thing really..."
"It'th a yes/no question, if you bothered listening to me." Ken said.
"Yeah well, I got my own shit to take care of." Kan explained. You see, Kan was the kind of guy that likes to salvage stray computer parts and randomly hook them up to the network to perform all kinds of services. Most of these services were "hosting warez." A lot of the machines he just kept in reserve in case he got into some crap. His most shining achievement was a little intranet he called "Shidapu."
Kan was a graduate student, which meant he needed a thesis. He decided to make his thesis deal with distributed-clustered-computing. In other words, he got a huge grant to host warez all day. Oh, he'd run some of his thesis code on the computers from time-to-time. You know, to get some "statistics" and crap.
Kan thought he was the shits until he logged into Shidapu one day. His normal log in message was replaced with something so bizarre that he was trying to relocate his computer as a result:
Welcome to Shidapu, RIT's greatest loss of bandwidth for the last two quarters! This machine is provided by the same people that brought you "I don't give a fuck if the network runs slow, just as long as my Crazy Diamond mp3's don't get severed from the outside world." These same people also brought you "I like the cock and whore myself just as much as I whore my university's bandwidth!" CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED, PACO!
With many manhugs and mankisses (not gay),
TEH@resnet.it.edu
PS: I know where you masturbate at night.
Kan showed this to Paul one day in the lab Kan taught. Ken saw it laughed and laughed, "That's crap. Probably just some script kiddie. Everybody knows the real TEH is in jail for cyber ethpionage." Paul initially agreed, "Yeah, after all, this isn't even a university, it's a technical institute."Kan was more serious about the matter. The only way into the computer in question was to either: 1. Physically log in to the keyboard attached to the computer or 2. Log in using SSH, which requires an authentication process so secure there are but only rumors that there's a computer powerful enough to break the key.
"That is, unleth he thtole the key when you first authenticated." Ken proposed.
"Well hey then!" Kan scolded him, "That wouldn't make him a script kiddie now, would it? Self-defeating argument!"
"That wath a stheparate argument!" Ken protested, because he didn't like to be exposed as the idiot troll he was. So Kan made his point, but why should Ken bother with this man? The simple answer: 400GB of Drum and Bass mp3's.
A simple transaction was performed. Well, actually there was no transaction: it was pretty much one-way. Ken got to drag home some huge tower computer and a router. The tower plugged into the router with Ken's roommate's computer. Ken's roommate was so oblivious (and rarely home) that it went unnoticed. Ken, however, couldn't help but notice the five fans in the computer buzzing away. He kept it in the corner behind a bunch of stuff in order to shake the noise from his mind. On the plus side, it kept his dorm warm during the winter.
Kan stayed away from Ken for the most part, and they almost forgot about each other. However, one Thursday night, Ken found somebody pounding away at his door.
"Come in! The door'th already opened, for Christ's sake!" Ken hollared. It was Kan.
"Hey man, what's up, do you need Visual Studio .NET?" Kan asked.
"Don't thmall talk me!" Ken protested. Am I the only one getting mixed up in this Kan/Ken thing? We'll get to that later. It looked like Kan was in a panic. Well, that was obvious because nobody really goes out of their way to talk to Ken in the first place. "Shit, got here just in time; look out in the hall." Kan declared. Ken couldn't bother to stand up, so he wheeled his chair over to the door. There was freshman-looking kid in an RIT jacket walking down the hall. He had a radio on his belt. What gave him away as an RIT employee was when he turned around to watch a hot piece of ass walk into the lady's room.
"That kid is Timothy." Kan explained, "He works for resnet. He's their little bitch. One half of his brain is stupid, and the other half is batshit insane. I think somebody tipped off my server to them, so they're sending their lackey to investigate." Kan looked at Ken in the eyes, "Did you hide that machine sufficiently?"
"What's 'thufficienty?'" Ken protested. After all, he wasn't interested in really hiding it, other than getting it out of his face. It turned out that it was surrounded by so much clutter that it was impossible to find it. That is, unless you knew where to look.
Ken and Kan fidgeted inside Ken's dorm for a minute, until Timothy walked by. Kan sighed with relief, "Oh good, he's gone."
"Hey, wazzuh." came a voice from the hallway. It turns out that Timothy pulled a 180 and was now peering into their room. "Hey mates, you look like the types that know a thing or too about 'servers.'" Tim observed. They weren't so sure if this was a compliment, or if he was just being a moron. Tim invited himself into the room, and he stopped somewhere in the middle. He started sniffing the air while looking around.
"I smell . . . burning bandwidth." Timothy observed with a raised brow. He then commented, "Or is something melting in here? Damn it's hot. Kind of heat you get when you have, say, a file server running in the corner." He stroked his chin while Ken and Kan gaped at him. "Something else." he added, "Do you guys hear something like a jet engine? Something's damn loud in here."
"Nah it's just your imagination." Kan told him.
"Oh OK, see you later." Timothy said, waved, and left. Ken and Kan looked at each other and both thought what a moron to be dismissed that easily. In reality, he knew damn well what was going on. They don't just happy-jolly assign internet addresses around the resident halls. He knew which room the offending server was coming from, down to which half the room into which the computer was plugged. But Timothy liked to fool around.
He went next door to a room shared by two girls. The bright colors and sweet smells gave it away. Lily, a cheerleader in her home town somewhere in Oklahoma, was checking her mail before a night out on the town. Timothy barged in and then knocked on the door.
"Excuse me, resnet is here to improve your internet connection." he declared. Lily glared at him and protested, "My roommate and me never complained about it."
"That's that magic of resnet around here." Timothy told (lied to) her, "We can predict the future! Notice your connection running like ass?"
"Umm... not really?"
"Trust me, it is. Can I borrow your computer to do some of the maintenance?" Lily still glared at him.
"Ummm... no..."
"Thanks." Timothy said as he brushed her aside. He established a connection to one of his own computers, and then used the backdoor into Kan's server in the other room. The girl was puzzled what to do -- she had been busy reading a long-winded email from her boyfriend from home. It was pretty intimate, and it was blaring out from the corner of the screen. Timothy didn't seem to pay any attention to it. He was busy sending his first warning to Kan.
In the next room, Ken and Kan were interrupted by the sound of a weak electric motor. They looked into the corner, and saw the server's CD-rom drive bay opening up all by itself. It stuck the tray out like it was giving them a big raspberry. "That's odd." Kan commented, getting up to shut the door. He hijacked an idle terminal session on Ken's Linux machine to see what was up. He was greeted with warning number two. As soon as he logged in, a window of the goatman popped up on his computer.
For all of you that don't know, the goatman (aka "The Reciever") is the weapon to use when you want to burn a person's eyes out. Most of you have seen it somewhere. It's the picture of a man, bent over, pulling his ass wide open with his hands. Oh, he has a ring on one of his fingers too. Well, this was what was greeting Kan and Ken.
Oddly enough, they've had to see that image so many damn times that it had lost its touch. So on to step three. Timothy thought he'd start sending Ken some nasty messages to get his point across. He didn't know what Ken's hostname was, but he knew what his IP address was, and used that to scan him. Lo and behold, he had a UNIX talk port open and ready for harassment! Kan paused at the computer for a moment, looked towards Ken, and said, "Hey somebody is trying to initiate a talk with you. He has the username . . . TEH, oh crap, he's mine!"
The chat session went something like this:
TEH: Are you enjoying your evening?
Kan: It's fine thank you. Go fuck off.
TEH: No, fuck you. On behalf on everybody here that can't do anything because you're stealing all the bandwidth, fuck you.
Kan: You think you are so 1337 breaking into other peoples boxes.
TEH: Would you rather I just report you in to resnet for a little love chat?
Kan: I'll get you busted for being a script kiddie. Are you getting off breaking into other people's computers?
TEH: Hell no. If it weren't for self-righteous idiots like you, hosting 324,833 illegal files on your computers, I wouldn't be bothering right now.
Kan: Oh? You just want my files?
TEH: I want you to stop, that's what. The Internet was self-governing before idiots like you came along.
Kan: You are incorrect. The Internet was self-governing until black hat wannabes like you came along. Then it all went to hell.
TEH: Beg you pardon. I have been hearing complaints from people unable to complete work through the network, even with all the damn bandwidth we have. I'm here to tell you to stop, for the good of the network.
Kan: Yeah right, or what?
There was a pause for a moment. "Hah! The fool doesn't know what to say!" Kan declared triumphantly.
"He doesn't know what to 'write.'" Ken told him, "A chat session cannot 'say.'" Ken looked over at the server in the corner. "Hey man, the therver's hard disks are going nuts." He told Kan. The hard disk light was on a constant orange." Kan scrambled back to the keyboard.
TEH: All illegal files on that computer that start with the letter "a" are now gone. Buh-bye!!!
Kan: You're nothing but a bunch of script kiddie trash! You could write a hack of your own if you put years into it!
TEH: Ah OK I'll delete the ones that start with numbers and symbols now. Oh, just to let you know, you were infected with a virus that had a dot at the start of the filename. It was set up to hammer CNN.com. You're welcome for the free fix.
"Shit!" Kan screamed, as he went over to another terminal window. Funny -- his remote connections were severed. Meanwhile, Timothy sighed in the other room. "Please leave!" the ex-cheerleader told him. He got up, and declared "Ah OK, all done."
"I don't know what you were doing, but I don't think that was fixing anything! Get out or I'll call the cops!"
"Heh, that's too bad, I thought we'd get to know each other, seeing that you're single now." Timothy said with a raised brow, "If you had read your boyfriend's email, you would have known he just dumped you."
"Fuck! No!" She screamed, scrambling to reclaim her computer. Timothy tip-toed out as she cried at the computer. On his way out, he turned back, lifted his imaginary hat, and said, "Please come again if you have further problems! We can even hook you up with a boyfriend! It's raining men around here, you know."
Timothy passed by Ken's now-shut door, and started heading towards the elevator. He decided to just sit down against the wall there and wait for his quarry. Sure enough, Ken's door opened five minutes later. A very agitated Kan came barging out, carrying his huge server behind him. The cables to it were dragging behind him. As Kan went to push the up elevator button, he asked Timothy, "Hey you, did you notice any strange people around here?"
"What abouts?" Timothy asked, innocently enough.
"I mean, did any, like, scary/nerdy people go into the room next to ours?"
"No I didn't see anything." Timothy stated.
"Somebody in there just hacked into my computer! You're resnet, you should handle this crap!" Kan lectured to him.
"Well sir, you can issue a trouble ticket, and we can examine that computer for any signature of the cracker." Timothy offered. Kan fumbled for a moment and told him, "Dammit, just forget it, OK?"
"Why? It sounds very severe..."
"Just back off, you couldn't handle it if that fist in your head you call a brain actually worked!"
"Now sir... there's no need to be rash." Timothy told him, and then he said, "Hey! There was somebody odd in that room after all?" There was a pause as the elevator opened. "Yeah, there was a girl in there! She was hot, would you believe it!" Timothy told him, and laughed as Kan flung himself into the elevator. At that point, Kan wanted to be as far away from that incompetant prick as possible.
Word somehow
got out that some huge server on RIT got busted. Many of the freshmen moaned
over this because they got all their trash from that server. Word leaked
out even more that it had originated in Ken's room. So half the people
thought Ken was a big warez guy, and the other half that took his explanation
wanted to get into Kan's stash. That wasn't gonna happen, or at least not
for a long time. It looked like Kan's graduate project had taken a major
setback. But after all was said and done, everybody noticed the network
speed jumped dramatically. Everybody celebrated by playing games all day.
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