‘Twas the Night Before GeekShuimas…
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!
‘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
Leveraging the benefits of Facebook, without compromising the company network.
Our last article dedicated to Facebook dealt with the potential downside users experience by providing an open view of their lives to their virtual world (Read it here). In this article, we’ll change the scenario and examine it from a business perspective. Facebook was originally responsible for reconnecting millions and millions of friends from around the world. In the last year or so, though, users have seen a sharp uptake in the amount of companies using Facebook. Why would a company use a social networking site? After seeing the speed with which information is passed throughout the Facebook Kingdom, many companies began eyeing it as a venue to attract new customers and retain their loyalty. Numerous well-known (and lesser-known) companies now have Facebook Fan Pages. Many of these same companies purchase banner advertising on Facebook that link to their fan page or company website.
For the companies that use Facebook for this purpose, it is necessary to allow access to the website on their local networks, so that status updates, offers, and other communication can be effected on a daily basis. While leveraging the power of social media and networking is a great idea that usually represents a minimal investment, with maximum opportunity for return, there are also some vulnerabilities that should be considered. In addition to ensuring certain employees can update the company’s Facebook profile, they may also want to allow access to all employees, to ensure they are aware of current offers, promotions, etc. and are able to share the information with users in their own respective Facebook networks. Unfortunately, providing access to the site quickly proved to have a downside…. (Click on the “Continue Reading this Post” link, below.)
