(no subject)

[jarad.livejournal.com]

Two posts inside a week... this is a first for me. I don't normally encounter these levels of stupidity.

Call from a customer saying that half his phone lines and internet in some places on his campus site have gone down. We dispatch someone the next morning. They return flabbergasted.

An entire rack is gone.

A 42u rack, two 24 port POE switches, E1 extenders plus 2 fibre trays; all gone.

The fibres had been yanked hard out of the fibre trays by brute force and all utterly destroyed.

Did I mention they have no idea who did it or when because this particular building is mainly used by outside contractors, but noone ever thought to stop them from destroying an armoured cable marked 'DANGER - LASER - DO NOT TOUCH' and wheeling out an entire rack of kit that didn't belong to them.

Estimated cost to get them up and running again and in under 24 hours is running upwards of £10k (new rack, 2 new switches, 2 new fibre trays, splicing and engineering time).

Noone in the office can still quite wrap their heads around this.

Comments

[wibbble]

Jesus, that's some fantastic security they've got there. Not even CCTV, access controlled doors, nothing?

[tregare.livejournal.com]

O.o

[arabwel.livejournal.com]

..wha? sorry, cannotcomprehend.

[digitalraven]

Is it wrong that I find this incredibly funny, in that "If you don't laugh..." kind of way?

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

WHOA! What the hell happened there?! Damn!

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Was this from a data center? Because if so, name names, no one in their right mind should use one where someone can just walk in and yank out a whole freakin' rack and make off with it! Jesus o_0

WTF??

[ravan.livejournal.com]

What the living Fuck??

What kind of jackass does that? What kind of jackasses botched their security so badly that they were able to do it?

I agree with the above: name names.

[green-ogre.livejournal.com]

Man that sucks for them.

Was this a single rack in a comms closet?

Or did someone steal a whole rack out of a server room?

[phoenixalpha.livejournal.com]

Only 10k for two POE switches, all that fibre, manual labor, and the rack? What kind of cheap POE crap are they using, anyway?

In all seriousness, man, that sucks. Maybe next time they'll implement proper cardkeys/badging system, eh?

[brotherflounder]

What the fucking fuck!?

[jecook]

O.O

How in the Fiery Infernal Realms did *NO ONE* *NOT* notice that equipment going out the door?!?!?!

And why the fuck was the closet/room/etc where the rack was NOT secured?!?!?

(for the yanks on this side of the pond, 10,000 quid = ~17 grand USD.)

[jecook]

Or even a deadbolt going to that room...

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Because guys in overalls with serious tools and a serious truck were taking it away, and everyone assumed that this was some sort of approved activity.

I once had a friend try to convince me that he had stolen the ‘police’ sign from over the door of the single largest police station in Victoria.au, in the middle of the day. He just got a mate and a couple of ladders and some overalls. No-one (supposedly) said boo except for one passer-by who asked if they were supposed to be doing that, and was happy with ‘yes’. I don't believe him because he was full of that sort of story, not because it is inherently implausible.

[jarad.livejournal.com]

The office in question is used by contractors working on the campus' new buildings and they're in and out all day long, so no.. they had no security of any sort beyond locking the door at night.

[jarad.livejournal.com]

Not a datacentre.. a small on-site office used by contractors.

[jarad.livejournal.com]

ZyXEL ES2024PWR. Wholesale cost is a mere £240 each. I wouldn't use them for anything major, but they work well enough on small installations.

Most of the money is going on paying our splicing contractor and the new fibre trays and pigtails.

[jarad.livejournal.com]

Our customer's suspicion is that one of the many building contractors they use has just 'claimed' the rack and taken it. Apparently they're quite prone to doing this as they finish their contract and leave.

Which is funny, because they've ruined the fibre trays and unless you know how to factory reset ZyXEL switches (tiny button hidden inside one of the air vents) they're going to be useless to him.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

One wonders how, if these contractors are known to be (or even suspected) “quite prone to doing this”, they receive repeat custom. Or custom at all, once word gets around...


Word is getting around, is it not?

[jarad.livejournal.com]

If I knew who they were, I'd certainly never hire them. I doubt anyone in my company would either. Personally, I'd also be putting CCTV all over the office they work out of, but I fear that the customer of ours who hired these contractors is dumber than a bag of rocks and won't even think of doing this.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Eh, that kind of thing is pretty common in the UK. A university I knew of in the late 90s got a whole bunch of new Sun Sparc workstations and servers. All installed, racked up, ready to go, and it "disappeared" over the weekend after it was installed. Stolen to order, and possibly got a tip from the truckers who delivered the kit. It's not for reselling, but for stocking up your own little enterprise.

Also, we lost not one, but two $5000 projectors from our uni labs. One went one day, so we told security to keep an eye out. The next one went the next day. The thieves stole it at 1am, unscrewing it from the ceiling, they dropped it with a crash, but made off with it. Out the front door, where "security" supposedly kept watch. We know they dropped the projector and what time they stole it, because two students sat there and watched the whole thing. Morons. Sure, of course we did projector maintenance work at 1am!

[jarad.livejournal.com]

Something similar did happen once before to us, where a builder renovating a large government owned building asked if he was supposed to "scrap this big metal box thing connected to a bunch of cables", to which he was told to go ahead. Big metal box thing was the PBX for half the building, and was unsalvageable after being left in a skip in the rain all night. We've never had any kit just blatently stolen, at least not in this manner.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Ouch... :(

I have a suggestion for the future... and it actually worked on a cadet.

Friend of mine (civilian) had cookies and candy in her drawer where she worked. This cadet kept coming in and stealing her sweets. She complained and was ignored. So she stuck a bunch of mousetraps in her drawer. And the little bastard tried to get her arrested for assault, after being repeatedly warned to stay out of her drawer.

...after his superior told the cadet he got caught by his own stupidity, and inability to listen, the cadet stopped going into her drawer.

One thing I would add though, on top of the mousetraps around the racks... webcams so it could be uploaded on Youtube. :)

[jarad.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I've already been told I'm not allowed to booby-trap the racks. The things I could do with the rack's grounding pole and a cattle-fence transformer....

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

But it's not, technically, a booby-trap. It's a mousetrap. :) And it sounds like you have some massive rats... ;)

...I also like the way you think, with the grounding pole and cattle-fence transformer... muahahahaha!

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

The things I could do with the rack's grounding pole and a cattle-fence transformer....

Just be sure you isolate the racks and the cables from ground. No big deal if it's all fiber. :D

Might want to use something like a HVPS out of a laser printer, or something, though, it's DC and a lot cleaner EMI-wise, and with enough capacitance, it'll still pack quite a punch. :)

I did not say this. I was not here.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

"But, boss, I didn't booby-trap anything! They only lost fingers."

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

But it's not, technically, a booby-trap. It's a mousetrap. (http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/11/30/fire-box-traps-pranksters/) :D

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

...that's just brilliant! :D

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

One wonders how they don't just track the contractors down and go 'yo, fuckstick, give that back!'

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

I like the way you think. Do you do consulting work? (Electronics keep vanishing from my lab, and I'm getting right cranky.)

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

‘... and here's a bill for the repair, rewiring, and damages. Our landsharks and/or the police will be in touch.’