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It was a sweaty night in the city. We had a suspect, but no clues.
My blood ran cold, the coffee tasted like used motor oil, and we were all out of donuts.
Well, that's the guy. I need you two to find out what he knows.
Tilghman, you're good cop. BP, you're bad cop.
Why do I always have to be the bad cop?
All right, pal, get comfortable.
This is going to be a long night.
May a stranger offer you something?
Red bull, Cheetos, maybe a cushion for your chair?
No thanks, I'm fine. I don't know why I'm here though.
One minute I'm in my parent's basement playing Minecraft and the next I'm in the back seat
of a boiler headed downtown to the big house. What gives?
Word on the street is that in addition to being a trombone prodigy, prodigious gamer,
and sometimes white hat hacker, you work for ACMS in the server, network and resource management
group called "Sys Staff"?
Sure you don't want that red bull?
Yeah, I work for ACMS. I think I'd like to have my lip here.
No lawyers! C'mon, we're just chinning here.
All right, let's get down to it. We see you became "Super User" on 4-1-2013
at oh seventeen thirty hours on some system called "RAT BERT".
First of all, isn't naming a system after some third tier comic character some kind
of copyright infringement, but more importantly, what's this all about?
Well, there were some UNIX security patches I needed to apply.
Or I might have been doing some forensics on a possible threat detection.
Security eh? I think we got ourselves a wise head here.
OK never mind that. What can you tell me about "networking"?
Our group takes care of networking inside the machine room and out in our lab facilities,
coordinating with ACT and our customers as needed.
You know, I hear that having a robust and well configured network is important for both
security and performance. OK, never mind that!
We saw some kid running to a class holding a sheaf of papers.
Very professional looking documents. What can you tell us about that?
We have laser printers in most of our lab facilities.
Students set up accounts with us and then print out their homework.
I heard about that--you also offer cover page suppression and duplex printing to reduce
paper usage.
OK, never mind that!
Our victim had a storage key on him, but when we went down to the bus station and looked
for a storage locker, there was nothing there. What do you know about storage?
We provide a wide spectrum of data storage resources for various applications and services.
File servers, email storage, websites, drop boxes, you name it.
We've got about 30 TB of disk storage across three file servers used by students for email,
and centralized storage for their home directories. They can sit down in front of any one of our
1,900 lab systems on campus, and see the same data, anywhere.
File servers use snapshots to help make recovery of accidentally deleted files pretty easy.
The data is also backed up to tape and sent off-site which prepares us for any disasters
that could take out the computer room.
Impressive! Would you like a donut?
I thought you were all out of donuts?
Do not offer him donuts!
All right, new topic. Our victim had a computer, some sort of VIC
20 or Commodore 64 or something like that, sending encoded messages using something called
America Online. What do you know about that?
What is this? 1985? I can tell you that our email system scans
all incoming messages for viruses and spam, and also scans outgoing messages to detect
compromised accounts, in which case we can take further action and shut off access as
needed. We have about 20,000 regular users of this
email system, and we're actively planning an addition which will allow for departments
and faculty to send official messages which students can't delete and will also never
be flagged as spam.
Timely communication between tens of thousands
of faculty, students, and staff users on many topics of importance and interest? Fascinating...
Look, bub, that's all fine, but we've got a crime to solve here and we're not getting
anywhere. I'm asking you serious questions about a serious
incident and all you're doing is telling me about managing some instructional technology
resources. It makes no sense!
Tell me about this guy in the red hat. Jeez. So, OK, red hat is a LINUX distribution
that we support. We also support other LINUX distributions
and Sun Solaris. Solaris, wasn't that the name of a cryptic
sci-fi movie whose only redeeming quality was that it starred Farrah Fawcett?
No no no no, you're mistaken. Solaris was a Russian film, and which did
have a remake by George Clooney a decade. You're probably thinking of the movie Saturn
3. Farrah Fawcett was also in Logan's Run.
But if you like all those you should probably also watch Kin-dza-dza!
Tilghman! You're not helping!
Fellas, fellas, turns out this isn't the guy.
Cut him loose. But see if he'll play another little ditty
on that horn over the credits.