
Here is a story that, while I'm not sure of its appeal to other parties, is
still a source of great amusement for my office.

The office in which I work has the dubious honor of supporting all of the
campus Novell and AppleTalk networks for our University.  Because of this,
we maintain "SERVICE" accounts on every network, and a "SUPERVISOR" account
on the networks we directly administer (such as the ones in the campus user
rooms).  We use the same password for all of these accounts.  In addition,
all of our personal accounts have supervisor (root) access and privledges.

At a recent staff meeting, we decided to change our SERVICE password, and do
away with all the personal accounts on non-essential servers.  While this
resolution was passed with mummers of approval from everyone present, we
neglected to tell anyone to actually _do_ it.  Needless to say, no one did.

About a week later, a co-worker (A) was editing the generic STUDENT account
(changing PATHs, etc) when another coworker (B) logged in and realized that
we had another staff meeting approaching and the passwords still had not been
changed.  He immediately took it upon himself to start the task.

Coworker B deleted all the personal accounts and changed the SERVICE account
password on one server before he started on the next.  Coworker A
(the one working on student stuff) got a message saying "Your connection
is no longer valid".  He turned around and tried to relogin, to no avail.
He then tried to login as SERVICE with the old password.  No luck.  Novell
used its automatic intruder lockout feature to suspend the account after
five unsuccessful tries.  This coworker immediately called another
coworker (C) with a message like "There's a hacker in the system!"

Coworker C tried to log in as a student (as a test).  He got messages from
DOS that the environment was out of space and every time he tried to do
something, he received an "Invalid drive in search path" message.  He told
"A" that it did, indeed, appear as if there was a hacker in the system and
to down all the servers immediately.

Coworker C then logged in to another server as "SUPERVISOR" and noticed that
the SERVICE account was in the process of editing the user records.  He
placed a lockout on the account and cleared its connection.

Coworker "B" downed the local server and ran down the hall to another office
to down our "development" server.  While doing this, he ran past the office
of coworker "A".  "A" asked if something was wrong. "B" said that yes,
not only was something wrong, but there was a hacker in the system.  "A"
turned around to look at his computer when he noticed that his connection
had been terminated.  "You must be right!" he said and off the two of them
went to down a server accross the street.

Meanwhile, coworker C telephoned one of the main campus user rooms and told
the room monitor to "Down the server, down it now!  This is an emergency."
The monitor lept across the room and yanked the plug from the wall in a
frenzy.

Across the street, in another major campus user room, coworkers A and B
arrived and noticed that "STUDENT" was the only one logged on.  Rather than
immediately downing the server, they stopped and tried to log in themselves.
"B" tried to use his personal account.  "A" said that he had just killed that
one.  "A" tried to use the SERVICE account.  "B" said that he had just locked
that one out.  Both men began to realize what had happened and turned to
each other with gleams in their eyes.
--
This story is TRUE, I have embellished a bit (mainly adjectives describing
the room monitor's actions), but everything stated above DID happen.  I can
furnish the coworkers to prove it (provided they don't find out I'm telling
people about this and kill me first).

Dank

--
Edited by Brad Templeton.  MAIL, yes MAIL your jokes to funny@looking.UUCP
Attribute the joke's source if at all possible.  I will reply, mailers willing.
Remember: Don't send to me and rec.humor at the same time.  Try to wait.

