Ok, so I leave town for a week to hang out with family and friends. We got no hassles at the airport (other than one security guard requesting that I remove my shoes on the way to Vegas), we had no car issues (I did not buy extra insurance for the rental vehicle as it would have doubled the cost), and nobody got poisoned or crushed under falling rocks or anything like that.
However, our car (ours, not the rental) was vandalized – it now no longer has a passenger side mirror. Nicole had picked it up from the airport and parked it in at her apartment – next to a golf course. Apparently some kids hopped out of a red pickup and tore the mirror off. Neighbors reported it, but yeah, no leads and the damage is minor enough that it would be pointless to get insurance to handle repairs. Thankfully, I don’t really use that mirror much.
And then, as if that weren’t enough, I come in to work today and discover that the Alumni server (Engr, not TAMS) was rooted yesterday afternoon. The damage done was more substantial than any other incursion I have ever witnessed – the hosers (Romanians) started an irc bot and a port scanner, but managed to gum things up sufficiently that they were unable to actually get back in to reap the fruits of their labors. Several key utilities are completely borked, most notably grep (upon which does not only the script kiddies’ toys depend, but a whole slew of system startup scripts as well). Networking is a lost cause.
Whenever I leave town, something goes wrong with one of my servers. It has been noted time and again that I seem to keep machines running and secure by sheer force of will. My range seems to be somewhere under 200 miles – if I ever get further away from a box it is on its own.
The only good thing about this attack was that we were planning on replacing the compromised machine by the end of the week anyways.