| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Router Down |
| Date: | Sun, 9 Nov 1997 18:43:50 +0000 |
>>>>>[The local LTG hub went down right on schedule. Nobody killed,
nobody wounded, and it should be back on line within hours. Long
enough...
Wasn't even too hard to do. Want to know how? Okay, this is the Andrew
Kryzdanovich School of Deception, Fraud, Breaking and Entering,
The router hub's in an office building, and their security sucked (I
mean, what is there to steal during the day?) Turn up in coveralls and
ballcap with a nice logo, a home-made ID card (got to love laminating
machines, every desk should have one) with a toolkit and a work order,
because you're here to fix the synthicaf machine in the employee
canteen. Find me an office building where people _don't_ endlessly bitch
about the synthicaf.
The guard - only one, an Ork kid with pimples, an Ares Light Fire, and
empty ammo pouches (poor kid probably doesn't get issued live rounds,
costs too much in liability insurance) has never seen anyone from this
"service company", doesn't know me from Adam, has probably never seen
the maintenance supervisor's signature, but my reminding him to check my
toolkit convinced him that I couldn't be a bad guy. So I get a visitor's
badge and directions.
Once I'm inside, of course, I switch work orders. Now I'm here to fix an
air conditioner that's dripping on the telecoms routers. That, too, gets
the proper response: the rank and file resent all the high-and-mighty
Renraku techs swanning in to twiddle with the telecom hub, chatting to
the secretaries, and generally snottily being "we could buy this outfit
out of pocket lint, let alone pocket change", so bitching about how rude
they were and how if it were up to me I'd just let the pipes drip till
the fragging hub was floating, goes down well with the intern who's
taking me there.
The door's locked and _well_ secured. No shit, Sherlock, you see how
insecure this building is. The intern obviously wants to watch me get
in, probably so he can see what's inside the shrine, which is also going
to be tricky. Plus the door is nicely visible from Cubeville, also a
complication.
So, as I'm "going for the access cards", I remember how long I'm going
to be locked in there, so I'd better go to the bathroom first, which
shakes him loose. In the john, I see the smoke/heat detectors: so all
the toilet paper and hand towels go in the trash basket, which makes a
wonderful bonfire, and once the alarms are going I leave the door wedged
open so the smoke can waft out. Cue a disciplined evacuation.
This gives me time to go from Plan A - carefully and quietly circumvent
the alarms and locks on the door - to Plan B, which is three chunks of
thermite paste. Lovely stuff for locks, thermite, it's rust and powdered
aluminium, and you light it with a stub of magnesium ribbon. Doesn't
show on any sniffers, and burns fast and quiet at at over two thousand
C. Goodbye hinges, goodbye lock, door's open.
Now I need to work fast before the fire wardens reach this area for
their final "everyone clear"? check. Kid's play, though. The hubs have
great skeins of cables going in and out: terabytes of data a second
flowing back and forth as coded light. Pull each cable out of the
connector on the wall, give the connector a good whack with a claw
hammer, move to the next connector while little pieces of glass still
fall.
Takes maybe a minute to wreck every connector on the wall.
By now I _know_ Renraku are scrambling a squad, and I need to be
elsewhere, so I join the last stragglers from the upper floors on the
fire stairs. Outside, merge with three hundred worried office workers
all craning their necks to look for smoke or flames, slip away as
Renraku arrive at the same time as the Franklin truck and get into a
squabble as to who's allowed into the building.
Didn't see the outcome, I walked three blocks to a coffee bar, got a
cappucino and a Danish, chatted about the fun up the street, went to the
men's room, came out in a suit minus the disguise while the counterman
and both other clients are looking at the excitement.
Get the bus a few stops up, get a cab back, the car's still where I left
it and no Red Samurai leap out to practice kendo on me so I figure I'm
clear.
So, they've got fake fingerprints, a description that doesn't quite
match me (amazing what ColorChange cybereyes, a wig and a little
discreet makeup will do for you) and a non-violent MO. It ought to take
them two to four hours to get the hub back on line, but it's just new
connectors and man-hours not a multi-million-yen subLTG hub router.
Should keep Renraku from coming after me too hard.
How did you guys do?]<<<<<
-- Marlowe <18:42:45/11-09-58>
