‘Twas the Night Before GeekShuimas…

December 22, 2009 - By Justin E. Gehrke

To celebrate Christmas (and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and any other that holiday that goes unmentioned) this December 2009, Geek Shui Living wanted to do something different. Sure, our Top Ten list from Thanksgiving was fun, but we knew we could do better. What do we mean by better? Better in the sense that we could do something humorous that still delivers the Geek Shui message of striving to achieve balance between our real and virtual lives.  After mulling over a number of ideas and discarding the ones that might involve complicated tests on lab rats or require decontamination suits, we settled on a geeky rewrite of the Clement Clarke Moore classic, “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” We’re hopeful that it will bring a smile to your face and carry you into an even geekier 2010. To close out the year, Geek Shui Living would like to say thanks to those who regularly visit our site, read our (way too long) blogs, and follow us on Twitter. We look forward to giving you even more in the coming year!

Merry GeekShuimas 2009

‘Twas the night before GeekShuimas, when all through the company’s net,
Not a packet was flowing, not even an HTTP Get;
The patches were applied on the servers with care,
In hopes that GeekShuiMan soon would be there;
The technicians were nestled with ambient noise iPhone Apps in cubicle-shaped beds,
While visions of Apple Tablets danced in their abnormally large heads;
And the CIO with her MacBook , and I with my Ubuntu-powered Lenovo,
Had just logged in to read tweets and surf Gizmodo,
When from back in the server farm the Snort SMTPed an alert,
I sprang from the desk fearing my precious network was hurt.
With a Ctrl+Alt+Del I authenticated in a flash,
Connecting to the web console with a colon, slash, slash.
The red on the graph of the event logs did show
That something had happened to the packets in flow,
When, what to my Coke-bottle lensed eyes should appear,
But a virus laden zip file, that slipped in via peer-to-peer,
With a little executable, so simple, yet such a threat,
I knew in a nanosecond it must be the dreaded Botnet.
More viral than AH1N1 its malicious code was insane,
And it quickly took over and called ports by name;
“Through, 42! Through, 80! Through, 135 and 137!
Through, 445! Through, 1025! Through, 1433 and 2745!
Traverse the open local ports! Traverse the firewall!
Now zombify! Zombify! Zombify all!”
Like a netsend that through an open network does fly,
When they meet with a closed port, another they try,
Up through the 65,535 ports they flew,
With a payload of malice, driven by an evil-minded Remote Admin too.
And then, on the screen, I saw a graphical racket
The ingress and egress of many a data filled packet.
As I frantically tried to shut the main router down,
A pop-up appeared showing my remote hacking clown.
He was dressed in black t-shirt with an anarchy sign,
And his fiendish grin told me everything would not soon be fine;
A Darth Vader cape he wore on his back,
And he looked like a teenager hopped up on crack.
His eyes — how they glared! His pimples how scary!
His glasses were thick, his unibrow so hairy!
His sniffling nose was in need of a blow,
And the sparse stubble on his chin said a beard was never going to grow;
The piercing and annoying sound of his cackling laughter,
Made me suspect that an air-filled snort would soon come after;
He had a round splotchy face and disheveled hair,
That hung down over the unibrow in dire need of Nair.
He was pale and gaunt, a creepy sort of hacker,
And I grimaced the moment I saw him, this nerdy attacker;
The sight of his fingers twitching to and fro,
Told me his payload was ready to go;
He moved with swiftness, ready to send,
And I knew in a moment that the network I must defend,
And as the mischievous grin spread to reveal coffee stained teeth,
He reached for the <Return> key, you know, the one with the <Shift> key beneath;
He tapped on the key, giving the command to initiate,
And toward me came packets that would surely not vacillate.
In that split second, I implemented my only feasible Disaster Recovery Plan,
I dove for the cable that brought the wonderful internet into our LAN;
And I yanked that thing out, my heart filled with fright,
And as the final packet entered the pipe I heard him proclaim in the final moment of the fight,
“Happy GeekShuimas to all, and to all a geeky and zombie-free night!”

Justin E. Gehrke is the founder of Geek Shui Living. As a right and left-brained geek, he is available for consulting in the areas of Information Technology, Network Security, and creative web design and development. You can contact him via the Geek Shui Living Contact page. Alternatively, you can follow him, via twitter, and be voraciously consume his technology news commentary and random geek ramblings: http://twitter.com/GeekShui


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