Just when you thought it was safe to enjoy a beer: Beware the downloaded patch applied in haste

The weekend is over and Monday is here. Celebrate your IT prowess with another there-but-for-the-grace confession from the Who, Me? archives. Our tale, from a reader the Regomiser has elected to dub "Simon", takes us back to the early part of this century and to an anonymous antipodean institution of learning. Simon was …

[Anonymous Coward]

Career-limiting email

I remember someone who received an email entitled "xxx promoted to engineering manager" and forwarded the subject to a friend with a comment along the lines of "the peter principle in action".

Unfortunately in his haste to share the news he mistakenly pasted the subject line into the CC field, where the mailer found the word 'engineering' and obediently sent the insulting email to the entire engineering organization, some 5,000+ people (including the recent promotee).

He compounded his error by then sending an apology to the whole alias, drawing even more attention to it. A few months later he left to find other opportunities, presumably ones without email...

[Graham Dawson]

Re: Career-limiting email

I'm surprised they didn't promote him first, just to drive the point home.

[Anonymous South African Coward]

ILoveYou...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yes.

The company I was with got that, and it was opened by supernumerary recipients.

We had no server for days. But when it came back online, the IT people warned that there might be further emails pending which were infected, and not to open them.

But guess what?

A significant number of people - many of whom were only passingly aware (some, not at all) there'd been a problem in the first place - were so intrigued by the 'I Love You' subject line that they opened them again.

So it all kicked off once more.

[Doctor Syntax]

"they opened them again"

Self selecting for basic internet security training.

[David 132]

Self selecting for basic internet security training.

Remind me. Is that the one that involves a cattle-prod, or a P45?

[Doctor Syntax]

Both, in that order.

[Korev]

If it's a decent prod then the P45 won't be necessary. You could even come to a deal with the local undertaker...

[Alan Brown]

Pandora's Inbox

https://imgur.com/gallery/ITM3P

[John Arthur]

I remember that well. Our IT network guy opened the email not once but twice. He kept his job but only because he did not work for me.

[Alan Brown]

I had secretarial staff bypassing the AV software screaming its tits off about the content being malicious "Because it might be important" and making official complaints that I had treated them like naughty children, lecturing them about the amount of manhours they'd wasted for the IT people having to repair systems they'd trashed (after being down for a day or so and unable to work) - twice (the second time I was less polite to them about it)

They then filed official complaints when I locked systems down to prevent them being able to do it again

Responses that they should be upgraded to using Etch-a-sketches were regarded by mangement as highly amusing, but also unsuitable for a professional company

[Martin]

Oh yes.

I was working for a US multinational bank, who used Lotus Notes, so it didn't affect us unduly. However, there was one small pocket of the bank who had refused to switch to Lotus Notes and insisted on using Outlook. Caused them considerable grief, and the rest of us considerable amusement.

[Pascal]

So that would be the one and only known instance in history where someone was heard saying, "Glad we're using Lotus Notes!" ?

[swm]

I got that email at Xerox. Curious, I immediately opened it up as my mail reader was Interlisp and plain text. As I recall, it was a VB script and my first thought was, "I could write a better virus than that."

The advantages of running non-standard mail on a non-standard platform.

[tip pc]

why not just pull the Ethernet cable?

Funny how people like to reach for the power when pulling the comms would have been just as effective and arguably less destructive to the hardware.

[stungebag]

Re: why not just pull the Ethernet cable?

When several servers share a common chassis the mapping from NIC to port is in software so you can't identify the cable to pull without checking the somewhat complex configuration or relying on your non-existent or out of date documentation.

Much easier to just hit the tit. That's if you know which physical server is the one to kill, and that's a whole new series of Who, Me?

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: why not just pull the Ethernet cable?

Also for an Ethernet cable (at least one where the clip hasn't broken off), it's usually fiddly to reach round the back and into the rats nest of cabling, find the clip and press it then pull the cable. Also presuming that someone hasn't been diligent in their cable routing and tie-wrapped the thing to its brethren, making it doubly tricky

The power switch (either at the wall or on the case if applicable) is normally more accessible, albeit potentially less fast-acting (for the case switch) or more damaging (for the mains one) depending on what else the machine happened to be doing at the time.

Also can get compounded of course if there's redundant/secondary Ethernet connection as well.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: why not just pull the Ethernet cable?

Please don't remind me about the f*cking clip.

I was in the audience at an IEEE 802.3 meeting, where the Cannon? connector engineer was explaining what a great idea the AUI connector slide latch was. It was obvious the first time I connected an AUI cable, that he had never actually tested his brilliant idea.

Second only in pain to the drilling of the cable (and insuring that there were no tiny pieces of braid shorting the center conductor to the shield.

On the bright side, if your facility used 3Com transceivers, the cable segments worked just fine as 50 ohm feedline for your ham radio setup.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Funny how people like to reach for the power ...

... but if he'd tried to pull out the ethernet, would the server still have crashed to the floor? :-)

[ibmalone]

Re: why not just pull the Ethernet cable?

"He was just about to embark on his second pint" possible factor...

[Alan Brown]

Re: why not just pull the Ethernet cable?

because the thing was looping around internally and it would have gotten even worse for the system if not stopped immediately. Most older *nixes responded better to power recovery than running out of disk space

"Halt" commands or telinit S are also useful responses

[Notas Badoff]

Not as bad as...

So I'm checking in to workplace in USA from some burg in France and wonder why the server's a bit 'odd'. Finally track it down to some idjit has sent a page message to a group email hookup a few dozen times. Only it's a high-level email group and multiplies out to 3000 page messages in total to president/vice-presidents/lesser-gods/etc.

And I'm checking in in the morning. That means it's 0x:xx o'clock in workplace timezone where pages are being spewed without end. Ho-ho-ho!

I smash the page queue and logout. Login later that night, and strangely no threatening emails. No mentions in passing either. Ever.

Either I was prescient and caught it *just* as the madness struck, or the external page gateway was borked long enough for discovery, or *somebody* really likes me.

[Timo]

Re: Not as bad as...

You may also have proven that nobody paid attention to those alerts. Some companies (and PHB's) think that anyone and everyone should get the alerts, it usually starts when the company is small and the process never matures, possibly because the poor minion that was tasked with setting it up is long gone.

[Little Mouse]

I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

Step 1 - Some poor fool incorrectly sends an email to a massive recipient list

Step 2 - Indignant recipient complains via reply-to-all.

Step 3 - More and more and more people Reply-To-All complaining about all the previous Reply-To-Alls.

Step 4 - At least one wag will send a spoof "complaint", taking the piss out of the complainers

Step 5 - Goto Step 3

Happy days. Did we all learn some manners, or what?

[A K Stiles]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

Come visit our place (you know, virtually, not physically, dear <deity> THE VIRUS!!! ... won't somebody think of [everyone but] the children?!?)

It's still a regular occurrence - sometimes accidental mail to all, "Please let me know if this particular set of circumstances applies to you currently" followed by 270ty-billion replies of "I'm not", "Not me", "Why have I received this?", "I don't need that"...

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

The real embarrassment factor comes when everyone obligingly bats back to all with 'please remove me...' etc etc etc and you have over a thousand people getting spammed in the tennis. Oops, I missed out the important bit...It was to the core IT Admin Team distribution list.

[Terry 6]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

It does still happen. All three things. The email to a list instead of the individual. The irrelevant negative reply to a broadcast but specific message ("Has anyone lost a pair of gloves?") with multiple "Not me"s and the reply alls (In combination so that everyone knows that you haven't lost your damned gloves - or even better, that "Sorry, I don't wear gloves"- possibly with an explanation why. (Small organisations, so maybe bigger more impersonal ones it doesn't).

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

Small organisations, so maybe bigger more impersonal ones it doesn't

Rest assured that it does, or at least variations on the theme...

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

"It's still a regular occurrence - sometimes accidental mail to all, "Please let me know if this particular set of circumstances applies to you currently" followed by 270ty-billion replies of "I'm not", "Not me", "Why have I received this?", "I don't need that"..."

We get those as "surveys" or "online training" courses. Usually about how to stay safe in the office (if you are one of the few still going in) or how to make sure sure computer setup is safe and comfortable to use. But, as with all these things, they get sent company wide. Even the cleaners get them! Those of us out on the road take great delight in answering "no" to the many questions relating to adjustable chairs, wrist rests and properly positioned screen to minimise reflections. NO!!! I'M IN A FUCKING CAR PARK WITH THE LAPTOP BALANCED ON MY KNEE AND THE GEAR STICK. IT IS NOT ERGONOMIC!!!!

Oddly enough, despite all the exhortations to make sure everything is done correctly and the stated offers to help with equipment, there never seems to be any follow-up to the fact that NO!!! everything I do is NOT in line with the H&S "guidance".

Bit at least it's not an email only survey and reply-all can;t work because only very special people can send to the company-wide list.

[IHateWearingATie]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

I was working at a giant global company when that happened (2013 I think). The number of idiots doing a reply-all (to all 150,000 employees) saying "Please remove me from this list" or "Please don't reply all" was amazing.

It started at around 5pm UK time and took till 8.30pm before IT pulled the plug on the mail list.

[Martin]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

I still think that if a large company decides they want to make some cutbacks, they should send an "accidental" message to everyone in the bank. Anyone who replies to all with "Please remove me from this mailing list" or similar is put into the "at risk" group.

[Imhotep]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

Sort of like the occasional emails our HR would send out offering free tickets to or comcerts.

I always figured they scheduled the "random" drug tests from people who applied for certain concert tickets.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

Better even:

Create a distribution list targeting all internal employees.

Send a generic mail to the list.

Fire everybody asking to be removed from the list...

[Alan Brown]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

"The number of idiots doing a reply-all "

it gets more bemusing:

Once case I saw was a "reply all" saying that with "followup to" actually set to prevent people adding to the loops

People actually OVERRODE the followup to in order to respond with various inane responses, which would set off the loops again

[Terry 6]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

Had to add this, as of this afternoon.

We had an email asking each of us to tell the manager which of three possible dates would be our preference for a meeting. After the first "reply all" I sent an email saying, "let's not use reply all".

The manager sent a message reinforcing this.

Within an hour there was a " reply all " email saying which date someone wanted, as a "reply all" to the manager's email saying don't use reply all .

[ibmalone]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

I sort of miss them, it was a bit like a snow day for adults. That and false fire alarms.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

Don't forget fire alarm drills, for some reason those are always planned for a day with a nice weather forecast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

Ugh. I wish. Our last drill was during a nasty cold and snowy day.

Maybe that was the point, the headcount went very quickly, and everyone filled inside in orderly fashion as soon as we were given the all clear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

At a previous job I was once told "write disaster recovery plans for the IT" because some auditor had flagged it up as a missing thing they had to tick off. Once I'd been on a jolly got some suitable training in business continuity I knew that this wasn't something I could do in isolation of the company wide business continuity plan which ... yes you've guessed, did not exist. My requests to know what the recovery point objectives, recovery time objectives, and most importantly, budget for any needed improvements to processes in order to meet those was met with "stop being awkward and just do it".

I did also try and prompt manglement into considering some basics - suggesting things like "wouldn't it be a great idea if we knew who kept the keys to the village hall, you know, in case there's an incident and people can't go back into the building - and also can't go home because their car and house keys are also in the building ?"

Then one day we had a fire alarm - it wasn't a real fire, but it also wasn't a drill. The company handled flammable substances, and an empty "boiler" had been left on, causing some evaporation fumes which triggered a detector. So there we all are, stood outside in the cold and wet - most of them soaked to the skin, and it's starting to go dark. I say "them" because I grabbed my jacket off the back of my chair as I stood up - so I had a jacket, and my car keys (so was able to lend a couple of brollies - not that 2 brollies go far when there's over 200 people work there). And I said to one of the senior manglement something like "so, if this were a real fire and we weren't going back into the building, what would you do now for the welfare of all these employees at danger of hypothermia ?" That didn't go down too well, and needless to say, the answer didn't involve sending people to the village hall (or the pub - although the pub would have struggled to hold 1/3 of us).

At another job (in a multi-tenant office building), we knew in advance when drills were going to be, and the guy from the fire brigade would put printed notices up (picture of flames) to indicate the presence of an imaginary fire the other side of some doors - anyone going out via the fire got a right bollocking. I was really tempted to walk out via that route holding a fire extinguisher - and declare that it was only a tiny fire and I'd put it out.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

"stop being awkward and just do it".

Clearly it was a box ticking exercise and not an actual, honest to goodness DR plan they wanted. I suspect the entire budget for it was spent on your jolly training course and time spent away from your normal job (probably budgeted for 1 afternoon to write a few bullet points)

[Andy A]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

At the first place I worked the computer "suite" was above a paint warehouse. If the alarm went, you didn't think about fire drills, you got OUT. Once, knowing what batch jobs were running, we even tested the Big Red Button.

There was hell to pay when we once found that one of the official Fire Exits had been locked.

We knew whenever the paint company hired a new forklift driver. The condensers for the computer room aircon were used to heat part of the warehouse, and a handy place for neatly stacking a wall of pallets full of paint. Someone would have to rush downstairs and demand removal. Highest temp recorded was 55C (131F). Eventually the bearings in the units gave in.

[NXM]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

I was on the receiving end of a text tsunami a few years ago.

The local neighbourhood watch (run by the police) had set up a text service that was supposed to alert people to the presence of bad 'uns, but hadn't made it clear exactly what you were singing up to. Lots of people joined. At some stage those running it sent an incomprehensible 'test' message from a number nobody had heard of. Some people responded with a 'what the hell was that's response, which was copied out to the entire group. Followed by more 'what the hell" responses which were also copied to the entire group. The result was constant txt pings from the tortured, and evidently non-monitored, server.

I had to turn the phone off as it became unusable. The only way I worked out what was going on was some fierce googling on the sending number which turned out to be owned by the plod.

Some time later they decided to simultaneously phone all numbers on their database at 4am because of another test message put in there months earlier by someone who forgot to remove it. Both my landline and mobile going off at that unholy hour almost caused me a coronary.

They scrapped the service after that.

[Shadow Systems]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

My boss, his supervisor, & her manager all had improperly configured Out Of Office bits that wound up sending OOO Reply To All's to each other via the list.

The temp caches filled up so full that the system ground to a stop while the servers tried to make a dent in the *millions* of OOO RTA's generated by the aforementioned three plus every other Muppet in the org with a similar config.

I'm glad I was only an apprentice at the time & not allowed to touch anything unsupervised, it meant I was also not on the chopping block when the headman's axe came swinging down.

I've always made sure to configure my email client to only send a single OOO reply to each email address, & *never* RTA under any circumstances.

*Sigh*

[Alan Brown]

Re: I haven't seen a good game of Reply-to-All Tennis in years

"I've always made sure to configure my email client to only send a single OOO reply"

OOO == "I'm not home, feel free to come and BURGLE me!"

[knottedhandkerchief]

Remember the NHS borkage five years ago when an email went out to 840,000 colleagues followed by inevitable reply-alls?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37979456

[John 110]

NHS Borkage

I was there, dear reader...

[Anonymous Coward]

At my employer we have set permissions so average Joe can't just mail the entire company. A few exceptions are there, however. So if Mr. CEO sends a mail to the entire company (which he can), and one numpty click on reply all, his mail only reaches the aforementioned CEO. With, of course, the all company distribution group still in CC. Now, if Mr. CEO again uses the "reply all" button of course, and he and the original numpty keep on doing that...

[Pascal Monett]

Indeed.

Since Office 2010 I have seen many companies imposing restrictions on the Reply All button in Outlook (as a freelance consultant I see many different companies).

I have also heard of some people getting called to the CEOs office - and it wasn't for a promotion. I'll bet those ones didn't repeat the blunder any time soon.

[A.P. Veening]

At least not at that company.

[Dabooka]

Same here

They also blocked the all staff mailing list(s) as once it was used somewhat maliciously from who I can only presume was a disgruntled (ex?) employee.

Funny reading as a bystander though

[ICPurvis47]

Reply To All

When I was in IT, every new install of Outlook or Outlook Express had the Reply To All facility permanently disabled, so we never had a Reply To All tennis match. My Boss explained that it had happened some years previously, and he had instigated the disablement in order to prevent a recurrence. In that original session, all eight offices across the company were affected, and it brought the business to a grinding halt for best part of a day. Thankfully, it was before I joined the company.

[Naselus]

Re: Reply To All

Bit of a sledgehammer response. Reply-all is useful in conversations with about ten participants. Just lock down permissions to send to certain address lists - almost no-one needs to be allowed to send to [e-mail], and the addresses which are allowed to often don't need to reply to anything ever.

[Terry 6]

Re: Reply To All

It's only useful in a shared conversation. Many-to-many.

With a one to many question* (even if it's only a handful) that's {handful}-1 people receiving an answer that only the originator needs or wants to see.

And while I'm not a visceral Microsoft hater as so many are here, the fact that they have made "reply all" the default setting in the Android Outlook.com app is so fucking stupidly irrational beyond imagining that I'd like to see whoever signed off on this burn in the fieriest pit of Hell for longer than eternity..

*e.g. "Has anyone left a pair of gloves in the staff room?" followed by not only the originator, but everyone else receiving the all the stupid but inevitable 15 "not me" replies.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Reply To All

*e.g. "Has anyone left a pair of gloves in the staff room?" followed by not only the originator, but everyone else receiving the all the stupid but inevitable 15 "not me" replies.

My boss sometimes sends out emails which are worded in such a way that they ate more or less demanding that everyone reply ether Yes or No. There's always some who hit reply-all. <sigh>

FWIW, we are an IT business and our department are all technicians who should ALL know better.

[Fursty Ferret]

If you reply to a group email at my company and you have the authority to send group emails in the first place, your reply is copied to everyone on the list. The moral of the story here is that if you're a bit of an arse and some people don't know it already, they will soon. The second moral is that when using a company email account you never write anything that you wouldn't say in person or be willing to have CC'd to your boss.

[Charlie van Becelaere]

We've all felt this way,

no?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COnd-92UwAE-IXs.jpg

[fidodogbreath]

Hmmm

from a reader the Regomiser has elected to dub "Simon"

"Simon" has special meaning in these parts; could this be a true story from the BOFH's own PFY days? Everyone has to start somewhere, after all.

[John G Imrie]

Army Email time

Anyone else remember this

'Amarillo' video crashes MoD PCs

I did like the Army's response.

[ChipsforBreakfast]

Re: Army Email time

I vividly remember spending hours clearing masses of 'snowman eating child' animations from a poor, struggling Exchange server one Christmas. Not long after disposing of 'I love You' either.

Shame I couldn't dispose of the users quite so easily!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Army Email time

Anon because ..

While it might not crash the systems these days, it would still make the MoD network "struggle a bit" - mind you, just stuff that most people would think as "basic usage" can make it struggle.

But credit where credit is due - the network guys have done a brilliant job coping with the mass exodus from the offices to clogging up the remote access VPN servers. Almost a year ago it could be pot luck getting a VPN connection, these days I never see a problem with that. Just don't get me going on that barely polished bottom sausage called Teams we've had inflicted on us.

As to the Army/MoD response - that's about what I'd expect. (Almost) everyone realises that these guys have to make do with the sh*t end of the stick and being able to let their hair down like that is good for morale.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Army Email time

"Anyone else remember this"

I just went back and watched it again and something I'd not realised at the time. It's all one long continuous shot! That's pretty good going for a bunch of amateur film-making squaddies at the end of a 6 month tour of Iraq!

[Scott 26]

"simon".... "antipodean educational institution"..... are you sure this isn't BOFH IRL?

[G.Y.]

bedlam3

Those who know bedlam3, know

[John 110]

I once showed somebody how to send an out-of-office...

I once showed somebody how to send an out-of-office reply, only to discover he had one set up on his personal email that he had sent the test message from (In the days when your email client didn't worry about niceties like "only reply once to senders"). I got the job ("well you know who to speak to, John") of phoning IT to explain why the mail server was filling up...

[SImon Hobson]

Re: I once showed somebody how to send an out-of-office...

Slightly different, maaaaany years ago in a previous job we had out internet via "dial-up" ISDN and a leased line to a remote office. One afternoon I started to get queries from people who were waiting for emails - so I took a look at the inbound queue. We were with Demon, and you could finger the mail server and it would reply back with a list of emails in the queue.

So what did I see ? A 10MBytes email to someone at the remote office - who had been one of those querying non-delivery of an expected email. Needless to say, downloading this over a 64kbps ISDN link would take a little while. But said user had already told the sender that it hadn't arrived, so it had been sent again. And again, and ... User was told in "very clear language" to contact the sender and tell them under no circumstances to send it again. it took the rest of the afternoon and sometime into the evening to clear - I think I deleted the duplicates from the server before the user tried to download them over the 64k Kilostream the next day !

At the same job, some time later we were migrating to a new mail server. To avoid a big-bang situation, we did the "set up new server, tell users to change the server setting, set up forwards on old server for each migrated account". Yeah, no central management, and all mail downloaded with POP - IMAP was still in it's early days and client IMAP support was "questionable". Then one day we saw both servers slowing down due to a slight misconfiguration ! The max message size on the new server was slightly smaller than on the old one. So when a message came in that was in that window of difference, the old server dutifully tried to forward it. The new server dutifully send it back. The old server forwarded it, the new server sent it back. And so it went, until I upped the size limit on the new server.

[Hazmoid]

not me but one of my co-workers

I worked for a stockbroker years ago when Exchange first came out. Our marketing department were always trying to sell shares to clients, so had their distribution list __clientlist at the top of the GAL. Unfortunately many brokers (particularly the private school boys) were also dirty little perverts and were constantly sending each other filthy emails. One of them received a picture of a naked lady that he thought some of his mates would like and selected them from the GAL when addressing the forward. Those of you who have used exchange know that hitting enter in the GAL will select the email address highlighted and go back to the email.

This guy didn't realise that his highlight had popped back to the top of the list when he hit enter.

First I knew about it was one of the company directors running down the hall yelling "turn off the email server!"

I had to explain to him that unfortunately our email server was so efficient that it had already gone :)

As a client list, this distribution list also included a number of journalists, who quite thoroughly enjoyed writing about the interesting product that we were now selling :)

A grovelling email to clients went out shortly thereafter and the offending party left the office never to return.