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Shark Tank: Just one thing missing
6 comments- IT TOPICS:Networking, Personal Technology, Security, Software
Strolling past a row of user cubes during his lunch break, this IT guy notices something odd: One PC's monitor has a full-screen DOS prompt with lots of commands already entered, reports a pilot fish on the scene.
"Looking at the commands, he realized that somebody was uploading an executable file to another machine," fish says. "The target was a company VIP's notebook, the name of the uploaded executable surely did look ugly, and the file was uploaded successfully.
"He called an IT manager to the place, HR was notified, and a security investigation was started."
The VIP's laptop is in his locked office, so its connection to the network is promptly yanked at the network switch. Then the IT guy and IT manager storm into the VIP's office and explain what happened.
But the VIP won't let them remove the computer for proper investigation or even allow them to look at the machine. He doesn't care about this technical stuff, he tells them; he's heading home with his laptop.
Meanwhile, the HR manager is going by the book: Local police are called, the uploading user is escorted from the premises, user's PC is seized for proper investigation.
"Turns out the user was browsing some newsgroup and stumbled upon step-by-step directions for how to upload a file from the command line," says fish.
"There were also suggestions on how to seduce a co-worker into enabling file sharing, as well as a short review of keyloggers -- even suggestions on how to find the name and IP address of a target machine.
"This user followed the cookbook, step by step.
"However, he didn't know how to close the DOS prompt -- that wasn't mentioned in the cookbook."
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