💾 Archived View for clemat.is › saccophore › library › ebooks › bofh › newbofh › bofh27nov.txt captured on 2021-12-17 at 13:26:06.
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So the Pimply-Faced Youth and I are heading through the corridors of
computing central when our progress is impeded by the departmental Dead
Wood Discussion Group.
It is a matter of concern to me and the PFY that the group appears to be
growing in size. Once a group of two or three old salts whose technical
skills consisted of the ability to fix eight-inch floppy drives, it's
now the final resting place of brown nosers and work dodgers alike.
To disguise their true purpose (work and responsibility avoidance) they
indulge in long conversations about what's new in computing, where it's
heading and why, what we should be looking at and who's up with the
play.
This in itself wouldn't be so bad except (a) they either congregate in
corridors or someone else's office and (b) they sometimes infect the
boss with the forward-thinking-stupidity virus.
Today is one of those days. Encrypted TCP/IP and how it should be
implemented is the topic of the four-hours.
We pause briefly...
"What does that guy do?" the PFY asks quietly, indicating one of the key
speakers who's obviously attracted to the conversation by the
possibility of slipping one of his strategically polished boat shoes one
rung further up the corporate ladder with a display of superior
knowledge.
"Besides providing a load for the deodoriser in the air conditioning?" I
ask.
"I'm not sure, they all look alike to me."
The boss meantime is enthralled, envisaging a workplace coup in pushing
back the frontiers of networking security.
This is not a good thing.
Sure enough, two hours later, the boss is wandering around the office
with some hastily prepared notes in his hand.
"Tell me," he asks. "Why aren't we using encrypted TCP/IP?"
"Network overhead," I throw out to test the waters of his preparation.
"But isn't the overhead minimal when combined with private key
encryption software or better, single-stage encryption?" he asks, so far
out of his depth that the appearance of a shark's fin wouldn't be out of
place in our conversation.
"Hey, I never thought of that!" I cry in an enlightened manner.
"Well, get right onto it," he responds, gushing enthusiasm.
"Sure thing."
The PFY is looking at me with the same thinly disguised contempt that
was present on his features in the corridor scant hours ago.
"You're not going soft are you?" he enquires.
"This will speak for me," I say, indicating a recently installed PC in
screen-save mode.
True to form, the PFY hits the return key...and the wall behind him
microseconds later.
"It's good isn't it?" I say as he recovers his wits. "The word 'return'
is in fact a carbon track, which, when the key is depressed, is
connected to a high, but mostly harmless, earth return voltage. Now what
was that about being soft?"
Doubting no more, the PFY helps me implement the Boss's request to the
letter.
The boss receives this news with a smug expression and spends the next
day composing a memo about the frontiers of networking, new era of
security, blah, blah, blah. He words the memo so as to give the
impression that he single-handedly soldered bits together with a
cigarette lighter to make this possible.
To increase the effect, he selects the following Monday as the
switchover date.
The day arrives, and the boss bowls in with The Head of IT in tow. With
baited breath he waits for 9am to so that he can press the key to start
encryption.
With a click from the clock, a clack from the keyboard, and a thud as
the boss's stunned body hits the cast iron frame of an old tape rack
with lots of nasty protruding edges that the PFY and I had only removed
from the computer room that morning, encryption begins.
Then the calls start. Hands-free allows the head of IT to eavesdrop.
"Hello, networks," I say.
"Hi, this is the help desk. We're getting lots of calls from people who
say that their machine is throwing up TCP/IP errors."
"Yes, that would be the one-step encryption."
"Well how do they decrypt?"
"You can't. I thought you knew that. If you could, it would be two steps
wouldn't it?"
"ARE YOU SAYING THAT WE'VE JUST INSTALLED A SYSTEM THAT CAN'T TALK TO
ANYTHING?" the head of IT blurts anxiously.
"Not we," I say holding up a recent memo.
"I see," the head says, recognising the buttered side of bread when
shown it.
Sadly the boss's attempts to switch the system off resulted in a lot of
unnecessary damage to the tape rack, but luckily the head was keen to
let all the members of the DDG have a crack at it and eventually things
got back to normal.
Status Quo reinstated - all systems go.
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