Sunday, November 1, 2020

Electrician Takes Technical Revenge On Nasty IT Manager


It doesn't get much more technical than this. This is the glorious story of an electrician using McGuyver-like work to undo a literal rule breaking tool. Pretty dang neat stuff. 

1.

Text - r/ProRevenge - Posted by u/OlderSparky 4 hours ago A Sysadmin pissed me off. I just wanted to get him fired. ..a Sparkies Tale. Over the years, my job has been pretty diverse. I enjoy all| the Master Electrician and Instrumentation work, but building and maintaining networks has been a joy as well. There are so many pretty blinking lights. All the testing and commissioning tools are fun to play with as well. There are also lasers. One thing that never gets old is seeing people's faces (wh

2.

Text - "Tom" was a Junior Gov't System Administrator, working at a Regional IT Dept. When the position of IT Manager became available at a 2000 student Gov't High School, Tom was encouraged (finessed/manipulated/conned ?) to apply. See, Tom was a cockhead. As a wanker of the first order, in the 4 months that he'd been there after transferring in, Tom had pissed off the whole Gov't IT team. You know that person who has to comment on everything, thinks they know everything, thinks they are always

3.

Text - Tom had his own fiefdom. It also didn't take him long to piss the Principal off either. As well as the admin staff, and most of the teachers. I'd done work with Gov't IT for some time before Tom showed up and knew everyone, though only gotten to know him peripherally. He had yet to rub me the wrong way. We had two big-ish jobs at the High School, about a year after Tom started there. Change out a shit-tonne of keyed door locks for a brand new, standalone, networked door access system we w

4.

Text - In the planning phase of the door access network, Tom made it known that he would be trained on the new door system and be in charge of it, since it was a network in his school. The Principal made it known who's school it was, and that Tom would stay right the fuck away from it, since it was standalone and had nothing to do with him. Tom was not happy about this. One Tuesday, a little over 5 weeks since the door system had been live, I was driving to a job when I got the phone call that k

5.

Text - At the system operator terminal PC in an admin office, I hear that there were two issues. Some teachers couldn't open some doors this morning, and some other doors that the admin staff tried to change functions on weren't responding. I suspected the regular user teething issues. (We were 5 weeks into the 10 week term at this stage.) They went on to explain that they'd looked and found the teachers door access had been changed to remove some doors. They'd re-added the doors and fixed that,

6.

Text - Reconnecting the patch lead and rechecking the network, I see the other hubs are responding, so I push the door changes through. There are still questions though, so I open the system log. I see that the changes to the teachers access was made by one of the admin users at 5:33pm, and the hubs went off-line soon after. Strange, because the admin staff finished at 4.30pm. The log also showed that someone who is not admin staff entered this office at 5:08pm. Tom. I sat there and thought abou

7.

Text - As I was thinking, the admin staff said that Tom had been in earlier and had overheard the issues they were having. He'd said something to the effect of "That's what you get when you let electricians manage a network." Ohh ok, he was being pissy about being banned from this system. My crystal ball went through a variety of scenarios, and I decided to let sleeping dogs lie for now. Three days later, on the Friday, I got another call about the high schools door system. Checking in and check

8.

Text - Checking that the secondary back-up on an external drive was still intact, I dumped that into my laptop and had a swivel on the chair for a few minutes. Yep, this back-up showed that the admin login had been used to do the teachers changes this time, and delete the system log. All after the admin staff had left yesterday. This operator console PC had been provided by Tom, it was one of the school assets. The Gov't image was supposed to have been wiped and a clean operating system put on,

9.

Text - On Monday, I timed my arrival to the school just as the admin staff were leaving. I “just wanted to check some things on the system." They left and left me to it. I placed one small camera under the desk to see the back of the PC tower, one on a shelf looking at the screen, and one on top of a corner cupboard to see the room. Happy with my work, I went home. That Thursday, same thing again. Different teachers affected, and different hubs offline, but the same thing. Admin login used to wi

10.

Text - What he was doing was a fucking stupid way to go about it. His ego must be a thing of wonder. The contempt he must have held for my abilities (as just a Sparky) to figure things out, even without the cameras, was boggling. I maintain systems and networks far more complex than this. Like the schools security system for example. Or a similar door access system in a much much more secure facility. Ok fucker, game on. Over the next 4 weeks, Tom andI went through these dance steps 4 more times

11.

Text - The next 2 week term break was here, and we began changing out light fittings. It was easy work, and I had a team of 8. Once I kicked them off, I went to work. I added a relay card to each of 6 specially selected security system expansion points, in 6 different buildings. These buildings were where the people worked who disliked Tom the most. I'd worked at the school long enough to know all about it. Relays are wonderful. Give me enough relays, timers and contactors and I can make your wi

12.

Text - Say you figured out a way to get one specific pair of these 8 wires into, let's say, a relay. You could then maybe interrupt the upload wires, or download wires, or power wires. Any of these would cause issues for your computers ability to communicate. If you could turn the relays on and off at opportune times, for selected people, perhaps via a security system you had remote access to, you could maybe introduce weird intermittent faults in a network. If you could do this without it looki

13.

Text - A critical part of all this would be if you had a job, as an electrician, to make alterations to a buildings lighting. You could then turn some power circuits off, so that the network cabinet in a building was unpowered for a while. You could then take data cables out of patch panels without it being noticed by a Sysadmin. You could run a new length of data cable and terminate it into the patch panel, and make a nice coupled join of the two cables in the ceiling, then split off some pairs

14.

Text - The next day, you could go to work on the Head of English in another building. Then the Head of Science in another. Having Tom out of his office, and you having a legitimate reason to be in there (lighting job), would mean you could have a real good look around and find the the USB keylogger. Standing in Tom's office, I took a picture of the keylogger among the mess on his desk. (It might have been hidden in a drawer before that) Then I called my mate, Tom's old boss, the Regional Directo

15.

Text - On my laptop, in the Principals office, I showed them the videos of Toms vandalism on the door system. The Director examined the keylogger. It was so much worse than I thought. They found not only my system info on it, but info from the school accounting department, Directors department and more. Tom had so much incriminating evidence on it, from all kinds of Government departments, that he was bend-over-no-lube fucked. When Tom answered the summons to the Principals office, I couldn't he

16.

Text - He wasn't prosecuted, because that would've caused too much of a public stink. But Tom got flagged and would never again be able to work in any Gov't job, anywhere in the country. Not as a janitor. Or as a contractor doing Gov't work. And since graduating Uni, he'd only ever worked in Gov't. Sorry private industry, he's all yours now. - I did say something stupid though. After Tom left Principals office that reveal day, Principal asked Director if they could send someone competent to look

17.

Text - I put the network cabling back in place and took all my toys home. Thank you for reading. (Again, Fuck you Tom.) Glossary Kindy - Kindergarten. Where you learn, as a small child, not to run with scissors. Also where a lifelong acrimonious relationship is formed with glue. Not 'Clag' glue though. That shit was tasty. Scone - a delicious flour based baked treat. Grandma scones are the best, with cream and raspberry jam. The scones you try and make yourself are excellent hockey pucks.

18.

Text - Secret Squirrel - a cartoon I liked when I was a kid. A squirrel secret agent who has a mole mate. They have gadgets and adventures. Nick Cave - Australian Renaissance Man. Nick Cave is mostly known as a singer/songwriter. Excellent revenge planning music. Relay Logic - was used to run elevators before there were computers. So many things have relays. Little electromechanical wonders. I love them. Ok, so, a relay has a coil in it, that you energise. This creates a tiny electromagnet and p

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