[ILUG] From the register. XP machine rooted in 200 seconds.

[Ken Gilmour]

Captain's Log, stardate Wed, 01 Dec 2004 22:14:30 +0000, from the fingers of Nils came the words:
> On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 13:47 +0000, Ken Gilmour wrote:
>
>> Captain's Log, stardate Wed, 1 Dec 2004 13:42:20 +0000, from the
>> fingers of Timothy Murphy came the words:
>>> On Wednesday 01 December 2004 11:42, Liam Bedford wrote:
>>>
>>>> Once the machines blocked ICMP,
>>>> the number of attacks per hour dropped drastically. Which is
>>>> unfortunate, because it'll lead to even more people thinking
>>>> blocking ICMP is a good thing to do.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Isn't it?
>>>
>> I Hope you're kidding!
>>
>
> ************WIT WARNING****************
> <rant start>
> try ping www.wit.ie  *blocked*
> try ping snet.wit.ie *blocked*
> And even when i'm using any computer inside the college i can't
> ping any box on the outside world.
> Think someone should tell our IT manager that blocking ICMP is bad.
> What can i say,He doesn't believe me :( </rant over> nils

I accidentally blocked ICMP on a FreeBSD box one time... I updated the Kernel remotely and rebooted the box so i left a ping going so i could see it coming back up. 10 minutes later it didn't come back up so i called the office and asked someone to press the power button because i thought i accidentally shut it down. They said "The power light is on" so i thought i messed up the kernel. I went out of my way to go all the way into the office on my day off and found out that all changes were successful and the machine was in fact correctly rebooted but that ICMP was blocked... I could have just attempted to ssh in but *noooooooooooooo* i just *had* to go all the way in to the office to make sure it was working!