I’ve made a vague promise that this would be writ­ten in loose terms, so I’m sorry if I break def­i­n­i­tions of loose, here ;p

The St. Andrews IT depart­ment has long been a cause of angst not only for stu­dents, but for teach­ers, par­ents, and fish.  In the past, there have been var­i­ous peo­ple attempt to hack­saw it down, how­ever they have been detained and gen­er­ally oppressed because of it.

This is a topic scarce-discussed, for fear of reprisals from var­i­ous per­son­nel.  As Ellis Baker would say in “The System” — “Anything but I.T. Levi, any­thing.”  But SC shall brave it, bring­ing you news from the front at great risk to life, limb, and net­work access priv­i­leges.  Well, okay, reduced risk to the for­mer two, and dubi­ous risk to the third.

Don’t inter­rupt my drama­ti­sa­tion, okay?

So, any­way… In the past, such attempts to fell the gar­gan­tuan enter­prise that is SACS IT have been cir­cum­vented (often before the offend­ing par­ties were aware that such attempts had occurred — such is the ben­e­fit of a “first strike” net­work admin pol­icy, it would seem.  Nev­er­mind pre­ven­tion, accu­sa­tion is the cure!) — but now, two brave young men have ende­voured to strike where none have ever (pub­licly) struck before (and got­ten caught for it).

Bob and Bill, as they shall be known, set out on a mis­sion to bypass the *cough* secu­rity mea­sures *end­cough* that St. Andrews had in place, using a vast vari­ety of highly skilled pro­grammes (note: skill rests in pro­grammes) obtained from highly secre­tive and lit­tle known secu­rity resources on some­thing known as the Inter­net.  Big “I”, there.

It is alleged that cer­tain peo­ple obtained access to resources through the use of util­i­ties designed espe­cially to dis­rupt net­work activ­ity within St. Andrews, namely known as Linux, a highly mali­cious tool for Black Hat hack­ers, with known vio­la­tions of global intel­lec­tual prop­erty law.  Clearly, this is a tool only for extreme crim­i­nals on the edge of society.

Specif­i­cally, they are thought to have made use of the dubi­ously named “CISCO TESTING SERVER”, labelled with an equally ques­tion­able mes­sage — “DO NOT TURN OFF”.  This com­puter, thought to have been run­ning a vari­ant of this highly ille­gal “Linux”, was a purpose-built hack­ing tool, with the capac­ity to destroy nations at the press of a but­ton.  Go the direct link to ye olde ICBM launcher on the roof of BBC.

Hey, this is sound­ing more and more like “The Sys­tem” every minute!  Bring on Paint!

[i]If you haven’t read it, talk to Ellis Baker some­time, or talk to me and I’ll email you a copy of it — from what I’ve heard from him, he’d want as many peo­ple to read it as pos­si­ble… hehe, it is a VERY good read.[/i]

Dis­claimer: [i]The infor­ma­tion pre­sented above is not guar­an­teed to con­tain a shred of truth.  For the most part, I have taken a small part real­ity, and dis­torted it beyond imme­di­ate recog­ni­tion.  If any­one is offended by the truth that remains, if you can give me legal rea­son to retract com­ments, then I will.  Until then, post a com­ment, have a cry, and get on with your life.

Oh, and secure your net­works, whilst you’re at it.[/i]