NTEN Change Issue One: March 2011 : Page 39
WHAT WOULD YOU DO? EFFECTIVE IT MANAGEMENT IS You’ve Been Hacked? MORE ABOUT WETWARE THAN IT IS ABOUT HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE. IT’S ALL ABOUT MANAGING THE INTERSECTION OF TECHNOLOGY AND THESE RATHER STRANGE THINGS CALLED PEOPLE. MOREOVER, IN THE FORMULA OF HARD-WARE + SOFTWARE + WET-WARE, THE TECH IS EASY; THE PEOPLE ARE TOUGH. We know what to expect from the tech, but people come with foibles and idiosyncrasies. People will sur-prise you. They will do things with tech you never imagined. They will do things you’d never expect. Because people are so ingenious, nothing is fool-proof. If you think otherwise, Pollyanna is going to bite you in the butt. Avoid that bite by thinking the unthinkable; by imagining what might go wrong and planning ahead. Scenario: Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, bacon and spam. The following is real (or should I say, sotto voce, the following events occur in real time). The names have been changed to protect the paranoid. Suddenly you’re a spammer. One of your web servers has been hijacked and has been sending out hundreds of thousands of messages from some fellow named “Wilson.” Wilson is offering a “Free Video on how to earn $ 2 5 1,2 83 ” from something called an “affiliate strategy” with, of course, links. The links connect to a malware site that installs a drive-by Trojan. It’s been going on for a few days, at least. And, now, all of your messaging queues are overflowing with bounces and undeliverables (and nasty notes from former friends and colleagues). Moreover, your bandwidth is pegged as the poor abused SMTP server loops through the other eight hun-dred thousand pending messages; seemingly unable to deliver anything to anyone, including all the bounce-back notifications, which are, in turn, generating more and more notifications. Everything is spinning out of control. It’s a server gone rogue. What happened? It seems your baby steps into the world of user-generated content and social network-ing have turned on you. Perhaps that innocuous “Share this Page” widget on your web site—through no fault NTEN: CHANGE · MARCH 2011 · PAGE 39 What Do You Do When
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