The Evil System Administrator

It's Alive!

2008-01-18T15:38:00.001-07:00

Just to let you three subscribers know, I am finally back in action. I am moving this blog to http://www.evilsysadmin.org. I'm starting off by replaying the existing posts, one every friday morning. I hope to get you caught up in the meantime so we have a nice flow of fresh posts waiting at the end of the replay.

See you over there!

Planetary Destruction with a Coffee Can

2006-09-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

There's a funny humor piece at http://www.deepastronomy.com/how-to-destroy-earth-with-a-coffee-can.html that talks about destroying the earth with a coffee can.

It's a fun read, but as one who works for an organization that develops various evil technologies including planet destruction devices, I can assure you that while it takes more than a coffee can to destroy the Earth, it takes far less than "107,000,000,000,000 nuclear bombs".

What you really need to destroy the Earth is a destructive force that grows at an exponential rate you can either think along the lines of von Neumann machines or chain reactions.

Believe me, hitting the Earth with adequate force in a single shot is just not going to work.

Evil Motivational Posters

2006-09-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

The posters from this week's Comedy Goldmine at SomethingAwful will certainly need to be spread around the lair, I think this one is particularly appropriate:

Zombies on Television

2006-08-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

Now I don't want to make any wild accusations, but I was watching the Emmys last night and when Dick Clark came on I was very tempted to switch on the Xbox and play Dead Rising. When you see a man looking that good at that age and after a massive stroke, you just know something is up.

Hmmph, Amateurs!

2006-08-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading my daily Engadget and lo and behold, someone has developed a 'Death Ray'. Now I give props to the students at Tel Aviv University and recognize that they are still only students, but to steal a famous quote... I've seen a death ray, and that sir, is no death ray.

First of all, it looks unwieldy. We make death rays in the form factor of a gun because that is what people are used to in a weapon. Larger death rays are of course mounted into orbital satellites but from the specs mentioned we're not talking about a death ray intended to kill thousands, more of as tactical death ray.

And it needs a steel plate as a shield? Do you honestly think any serious user wants to walk around with a death ray that has a big steel plate on the front of it? Not only would you get laughed at, you would have a big steel plate interfering with your aim. Any decent death ray will have a tight enough beam that you won't need a shield to protect yourself from the death ray, and shielding from the death rays of others is provided by specialized clothing, not big awkward steel plates.

In the end this work represents a good first effort for non-evil university students, but their work still has a long way to go if they want to produce something that is actually usable in the field.

Dealing With Script Kiddies The Evil Way

2006-07-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

I recently reconfigured our network to increase security. Before I got here, the last admin had arranged to tap into a sea bottom fiber trunk for our communications. It worked well and we have great bandwidth, but I wanted to isolate non-official traffic and make it less traceable, so I created a separate network with a series of email/browsing stations for the minions all connected via a satellite connection.

This setup works well because it keeps any foolishness on the part of the minions from affecting the more critical systems and also keeps out the do-gooders who happen to find a random terminal.

The problem came when the IDS logs showed a goodly amount of post scanning happening. A quick check showed that the port scanning was coming directly off a machine with no real attempt to hide the nature of the scan or mask the source. In essence, some dumb kid was learning Nmap against my satellite connection.

Now had I been in a good mood, I may have let it slide. Problem for the script kiddie is that I was not in a good mood. So I tracked down the address of our friend the script kiddie (don't ask how), talked to the boss, and arranged a squad of shock troops and some transport. The boss was feeling frisky and allowed the resources as long as I got a good picture of the kid's face.

So we're hovering over this kid's town in Armpit, WI and I check his traffic: sure enough, nice blatant port scan. I'm sure if I left him alone his ISP would eventually be explaining to his parents why they no longer had service, but this was going to be much more fun.

I let the shock troops go in first with instructions to take control but not rough anyone up. Once I get the all clear I borrow a pistol, walk in, and point it at the pimple-faced fifteen year old I find sitting on the couch and already quivering, then whip out my camera and take a picture for the boss's sake.

"What's your name?"

"J-J-J-Jason."

"Well J-J-J-Jason, do you have a computer?"

"Y-Y-Yes..."

"Good. So Jason, are you familiar with Nmap?"

"Yes."

"Good. You've been using Nmap lately, haven't you Jason?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad you're being honest. Now Jason, you haven't been using it exclusively on your own machines, have you Jason?"

"No."

"No indeed, and I don't like people port scanning my network Jason."

At this point Jason's father gets up the nerve to ask what was going on.

"Do you ever see reports on the news about people breaking into computers, deleting files, changing data, stealing credit card information?"

"You mean Hackers?"

"Not Hackers, Crackers. Hackers are people who try new things, develop.... never mind. The point is that Jason here is an aspiring Cracker, and he's been playing with software that he shouldn't."

At this point the shock troops came out with Jason's computer. It was a pretty nice rig with a decent LCD and an airbrushed case.

"Now you should all consider yourselves lucky. You see, if Jason had kept on the path of computer crime, he may have been arrested, you may have been sued. Instead, we're just going to make sure that Jason doesn't get into any trouble and assume that you will keep a closer watch on your son's future computer usage." With that I snapped my fingers and the shock troops headed out with Jason's computer in tow.

As we flew away I checked the screen of my digital camera -- the look on the kid's face was priceless.

The IT Staff at the White House Suck

2006-06-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

So research completes a new doomsday weapon and it's time again to ransom the world. As much as I love the bonuses that come from a successful world ransom, I always hate dealing with the White House IT staff.

Every time we have to ransom the world, I get to deal with trying to configure a video conference with those jokers.

I'm just glad that Skype added video chat, seems to be the only solution that I can hammer into the IT guys. I just wish we could conference our demands to more world leaders at once, but we use AMD.

Back To Work

2006-05-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

Now that I am finally out of the medical division I thought I would bring you up to speed on my last month.

A couple of days after I got back from EvilCon 06 I was relaxing in my suite when there was a knock on the door. I opened it and there was Katiana, ready to take me up on my offer for a little digital violence.

Not one to argue with a trained killer, I fired up the Xbox 360 and the projector. Gah, what to play? I tried Halo 2 but Katiana said she did not recognize the weapons. Ok, something a little more realistic then. I tried her on The Outfit, a fun little WWII game, and was not surprised when she chose the German female assassin in the tight leather pants and a rifle.

We tried a few more games and I was finally surprised when I threw on Super Monkey Ball and she loved it. After playing for half an hour, she stood up and announced she had to go (so much for scoring tonight).

So how did I wind up needing medical attention? As she left she told me that she would take me out later to play with 'some real toys'. That sounded interesting.

About a week later she was at my door again, telling me to get some shoes on and come with her (whatever you say dear). She took me down to the firing range to show me how to shoot a real gun. Hey, no problem, I've always been a killer on FPS and gun games.

So we start with pistols. She hands me a Walther P99, showed me how to line up the shot, and let me empty the magazine to practice, leaving my hands quite sore and the target unscathed (so much for games teaching you to be a killer).

We moved on to assault rifles, where Katiana showed what a lot of practice can do for accuracy, though I did manage to hit the target with a few rounds of the 20-30 I fired off.

Katiana then showed me how to use a tactical shotgun.

I don't remember what happened after that, but when I woke up I found Katiana at my bedside looking bemused and guilty. Apparently after trying the shotgun as she instructed I decided to point it at the target Terminator style. Before she could warn me I pulled the trigger and, lacking terminator-strength arms, the gun kicked back and hit me in the head, knocking me into a coma that lasted until yesterday.

On the bright side, I got to wake up to the sight of the hottest assassin this side of anywhere.

Back From EvilCon06

2006-05-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

I've finally arrived back from EvilCon06, and it was a blast. This year's EvilCon was held in the lair of Dr. Slavotnik, a collection of old ballistic missile silos once used by the Russians. The location was easily dependable and much more thematic than last year's event held at the Idaho Falls Holiday Inn (which was at least effective as a place where nobody would expect a convention of evil).

I delivered a session titled 'Open Evil -- The use of Open Source Software in an Evil Empire' which was very well received by the attendees, especially the more technically minded evils. There were several good questions from the audience regarding whether Open Source software was evil enough, but having asked those questions myself I think the audience went away satisfied.

On a related note, the SCO booth at the tradeshow was easily the most popular booth this year. I love the trade show, you get wonderful swag in exchange for feigning interest in whatever the vendors are peddling. Since most booths are not IT related but more oriented around weapons I am not actually the target buyer for most of these guys, but that never stopped me from playing the game and getting some new toys. This year I really liked the exploding frisbees one of the weapons dealers was handing out -- throw it and it adheres to whatever surface it hits, then push a button on your watch and it explodes like a shaped charge. Most of the swag is your standard fare of kevlar t-shirts and pen-guns, but the extra touch goes a long way.

I always like the atmosphere of EvilCon, it's not full of petty thugs or family operations, instead the guest list is limited to those who work in evil either for the love of it or for the professional challenge. As a result there is no random mayhem, just people who love what they do and who want to share what they have learned so that together we all become more skilled.

I think the highlight was the closing keynote. Thanks to a generous sponsor, General Diabolik was busted out of his military prison and was present to deliver a session called "Never Say 'Before I Kill You' -- Lessons Learned From the Fray". It was a really great session that highlighted what happens when you become too cocky. There are several points I will be bringing up at our next strategic meeting like having the acid vats removed from the control room or at least getting some steel covers put on them.

All in all it was a great conference and I am really looking forward to next year's event. Maybe one year I should look at even having it hosted here in the forbidden zone.

Dealing with EMI

2006-04-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

One issue you can run into when managing a large network is that some network segments can lose performance due to EMI (electromagnetic interference).

I deal with intermittent EMI issues with the network segments that run adjacent to one of the research labs we have. The problem is that the guys in the lab are so paranoid that I never know when they will be generating huge amounts of EMI nor what they do that causes it.

Me: "So, any idea why I would be getting serious EMI in this area two hours ago?"

Spook With a Shit-Eating Grin: "I can't tell you."

Me: "Right."

It gets really tempting to 'accidentally' invalidate ID cards when you have to deal with this garbage...

Anyway, time to upgrade a segment to fibre.

Mothers

2006-04-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back at the island after having to fly home for some family matters (having use of the organization's jets is a benefit of my position). All in all things went well, but I can tell you that mothers can be a real issue if you want to maintain her image of you.

So we're sitting at dinner when she starts asking her questions again:

'So where do you work?'

'I told you mom, in California.'

'No I mean for what company?'

'I told you that too mom, Live Corporation.' - Too obvious? Naa, I don't think so.

'You're not making pornography for the Internet are you?'

'Oh I wish.'

'What?!'

'No mom, I am not making pornography for the internet.'

'Ok good, that Internet is an evil thing, I heard so from Maybel...'

And so it goes, every.single.time.

Still Alive

2006-04-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

Busy lately, but I thought I would let everyone know that the no-good do-gooders haven't got me yet.

Oh, and we have our second Starbucks.

Damn but those VietKong make good coffee.

Quick Update

2006-03-22T15:40:00.000-07:00

Remember when I said in my last post 'If I find out who tripped the alarm, they're dead.' ??

Well, they are. Seems the door control system is working well.

I warned the guards not to borrow eachother's keycards...

And There She Was...

2006-03-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

So things had been going well, the first servers are online in the new datacenter, the upgraded door security systems are working, and I find myself sitting in on roundtable meetings with the boss and other top-levels. I think I am hitting my stride around here.

So this morning I am sitting in a roundtable meeting when the boss introduces our new head of security. In walk what I swear has to be the hottest woman I have ever met, Katiana Kalashnikov. She's tall, dark-haired, and drop-dead gorgeous. From the boss's description of her credentials, she's made many drop dead.

So we go around the table, doing our introductions, and man does she have a great accent going, works well with the black leather that she wears like a glove. Anyway it looks like we'll have some great eye-candy at the meetings, even if there is no way you'd ever hit on a infamous assassin who can kill you five ways to Wednesday if you cross her.

Now here's where it gets interesting: after the meeting she walks up to me.

'You are geek boy, no?' Oh man I love the accent.

'I suppose I am...'

'You play the shooting games? Is it true they teach you to be crazed killer?'

Now I almost start into a knee-jerk rant on how the media blows these things totally out of proportion, how the examples they cite involve subjects who were already unstable and how in reality such games are great stress relievers and can hardly be called damaging to a responsible person. I say almost because before I started ranting I noticed that she didn't seem to think it was a bad thing.

'Well, there are those who think so, yes.'

'Good, you show me these games?' Oh thank you gaming gods.

'Sure, I... I have a big screen TV and an Xbox360 up in my suite...'

And then the gaming gods proved they have a wicked sense of humor as alarm bells went off. The display nearby showed an intrusion detected in sector six, and before I would finish my sentence Katiana was off.

If I find out who tripped the alarm, they're dead.

Server Room Progress

2006-03-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

Work continues on the new server room. The vent holes leading out of the room are ideal, with one vent hole leading to the outer surface of the volcano for heat venting, and with a bit of drilling other vents were usable for routing network to the rest of the facility.

Power is in place, concrete has been poured to level the floor, and I have the shock troops out securing server racks. I was originally going to send them to Utah to steal some from SCO HQ as punishment for the ridiculous SCAMP-stack business, but being so evil I'm not allowed (the whole honor among thieves thing). Instead I just tracked down someone on eBay selling the ones I wanted and sent the shock troops to their office.

All that's left is to get the rest of the infrastructure in place and start installing servers.

An Evil Workplace?

2006-03-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

I've been asked by friends if an evil organization is a bad (or perhaps evil) place to work, what with the threats of instant death for poor passwords or passwords on post-it notes.

It is best to think of such organizations as being similar to working at Disneyland: anyone who has been to Disneyland knows that Disneyland is staffed by a lot of teenagers and others who you would imagine can't possibly have the best job in the world loading people onto rides and wrangling kids, but what many don't realize is that these parks also have a ton of professional workers just out of sight. Take a look at this list of IT positions for Disney Parks as an example.

Those guys make good wages with good benefits while staying out of the general mess of things 90% of the time. I would guess that being a professional working at Disneyland or Disneyworld is a lot better than being a front-line grunt employee.

Working in the volcano is pretty much the same: grunts and low-level staff don't have good benefits and have to deal with a lot of problems such as threats of death, getting knocked out by intruders, shot by practically anyone, etc. etc. Professional staff, on the other hand, is treated well, paid well, and exempt from most of the trouble faced by the grunts.

You do have to feel bad for the grunts, as there is very little in the way of promotions. Even a particularly talented grunt would have to move on to an outside position and eventually hire back in at a more professional level. I've seen this happen with shock troopers who left for greener pastures eventually came back as assassins.

Is it fair? No. Is it evil? Certainly. I'm just glad to be one of the professional employees.

Evil Memo: Passwords and Filenames

2006-03-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

To: All Staff
From: The Evil System Administrator

Re: Password and Filename Security

Hi Everyone:

First of all, thanks everyone for using the new central document repository, it makes it much easier to backup and protect key documents than when the files are scattered across all our machines.

One thing: although the permissions system of the Central Document Repository (CD-R) is effective at keeping users from seeing sensitive documents, it would help is certain parties would refrain from saving documents in the top-level directory with names like 'Central reactor core diagrams and weakness summary' or 'Plan for world domination part 5 - achilles heels'. Such filenames just beg for prying eyes. All such documents are now located in /recipes/baking/fruitcake where they will hopefully remain ignored. While I am not in charge of physical document security, I would also recommend that said individuals stop leaving such documents just laying around on their desks when out of the office.

On to passwords: I know some of you were intimidated by the policy regarding instant death for anyone caught writing their password down on a post-it note under their desk, and I do appreciate that everyone has now set a password on their login account, but we need to cover how to produce strong passwords.

You need to make sure the password is not a dictionary word. I recently did a check of passwords and found passwords such as evil, malevolent, doom, and torture in use. Folks, these can be guessed far too easily.

Passwords should ideally be a combination of letters and numbers. Numbers should be non-sequential and 12345 is *not* an effective password as I am sure we all learned from the incident where the main blast door was opened by invaders last week. Ideally we want mixed-case letters, numbers and symbols.

Here's a suggestion: use a mnemonic -- think of a phrase, then take the first letter from each work, substitute numbers where possible, and keep the punctuation. For example:

I love to torture, maim and destroy!

becomes

Il2t,mad!

See? That is a nice strong password that you will always remember because it is also a favorite phrase.

Finally, I have talked to management and we are appending the death for post-it passwords policy with a death for weak passwords policy, so please change your passwords ASAP.

Regards,
The Evil SysAdmin

Gathering DataCenter Ideas

2006-03-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

I've been gathering ideas for improving the security of the new datacenter and found a wealth of information today in a Digg post. Here's a few examples:

http://www.thebunker.net/our-facilities/data.htm
http://www.havenco.com/
http://www.cyberbunker.com/
http://www.infobunker.com/

Interesting reading, and most of the benefits of these places are already in place here, we have thick stone walls, generators, more guards than you can shake a stick at, and we even have the advantages of Havenco: operations in an area unencumbered by government (of course we have government agents constantly trying to infiltrate our base of operations, but at least we answer to nobody).

On my breaks I have been doing some walking and have found a nice candidate for the new server room, a 100 square metre hollow at the end of a tunnel that comes off of the lower break room in section 7. It looks like it was being used to store old building supplies.

I have a crew working on tracking the paths of some vent holes leading out from the chamber, with some luck we should see one head outside for heat venting while the others can be used to get some power and network out to the rest of the place without running it down the tunnel. If all else fails some drilling should provide what we need.

Getting a raised floor working in such an oddly shaped room should also be interesting, I may just run cable in tracks suspended from the ceiling and get concrete poured in to level the floor.

8 out of 10 Terrorists use GNU/Linux Systems

2006-02-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

I was taking a look at my blog statistics through Google Analytics when I noticed that I was getting search traffic on the phrase 'linux is evil'. In fact, as you can see in this search, my blog is #2 for the phrase and the #1 hit is a link to my post Linux: Not Evil Enough?

While it's neat to see that I am already indexed, what I got excited about was the animated ad on the next hit in the search:

Man I gotta show this to the boss, I should be able to get Linux on the desktops even!

Evil Has a New T-Shirt

2006-02-24T15:33:00.000-07:00

In an act of shameless self-promotion, I have added The Evil Store to the sidebar. Shop away!

For those worried about supporting evil, all items are sold with zero markup.

You Take the Good, You Take the Bad...

2006-02-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

Did you ever have one of those days where whatever good news/progress you get seems to have to be tempered with some bad?

Get the feeling there's a story here? Well you're right.

The early stages in my revamping of the door control system have been moving on nicely: We have injected the outer perimeter guards with RFID tags, claiming they were vaccines for a new biological weapon that leaked outside. We have installed new door control panels in the outer perimeter doors, and issued new key-cards to the perimeter guards.

Everything was working well, with only one or two false-alarms when guards would borrow each other’s keycards if they forgot their own. The access control system was loaded with rock-salt shells instead of actual buckshot shotgun shells so the staff would have a chance to learn their lesson.

Did I mention the shotgun shells before? They are mounted just behind the keycard panel, hidden by a paper cover and fire if the system detects an intruder, great stuff. All that is required in the case of an intruder setting the system off is the removal of the spent shell and the insertion of a new shell and paper cover and the panel looks brand new.

Yup, everything was going well. In fact, this morning I get into work in time to see a guy with a nasty rock-salt injury being dragged down the hallway to the boss's antechamber. Score one for me! Just as expected, he knocked out a guard, put on his uniform, and tried to use his keycard. When the RFID tag that matched the keycard was missing, BLAMMO! The intruder takes a gut full of rock salt and the other guards are alerted automatically.

So that's the good news. And the bad news? Well, I was sitting in the server room working on a project when I feel this powerful heat coming from behind me. I turned around to see one of the servers has a two inch smoking hole right through it. Not only that, there are two-inch holes in the walls beside it, and I can see through a series of two-inch holes right into the boss's antechamber!

I talked to one of the guards later that day in the cafeteria and found out that after the intruder had been dragged before the boss, he claimed to know all about the boss's new plasma cannon and his plans to use it to assassinate key political figures. He then tried to convince the boss that he was of more use to him alive than dead, because his agency would expect to hear from him at regular intervals and would send in the troops if he did not report back, as they also knew of his plans.

My boss's reply was apparently along the lines of 'if they knew about what I was up to, they would have already sent in the troops, I'd rather kill you'. The intruder then asked for a last request. My boss replied to by shooting the intruder in the head with the new plasma cannon.

Now that's fine, sounds like a good way to deal with a spy and all, but he forgot to turn the power down on the damn thing before he fired, sending a plasma beam through the spy and four bulkheads before it went through my server, through four more bulkheads, and right out the side of the volcano.

As far as such problems go, it was not such a big deal due to the fact that the server in question was one of the new Linux machines I was provisioning as a proof-of-concept and was not a production machine, but it really opened my eyes to the level of redundancies needed around here: the machine was dual-processor, dual PSU, RAID 10, ECC RAM, everything I could get to make it reliable, but one plasma blast and the thing was offline.

Even a redundant machine would have been worthless if it had been sitting next to the primary. I think I'm going to check around the areas on the other side of the island and look into setting up a second server room. While I am at it, I think I'll make sure the next one is less conspicuous, with no 'Master Control' sign on the door and no picture windows that show off the various server racks (from what I have heard from the techs who work nearby, the room has practically begged to have a grenade or two tossed into it in the past).

Am I Evil?

2006-02-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

I've been asked by some friends if, now that I work for an evil organization, I have turned evil myself. I thought I'd take a moment to answer that.

I do not consider myself to be evil, but I'm not what I would consider a good guy either. I think if I were a role-playing character you would call me Chaotic Neutral:

A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but does not strive to protect the freedom of others. He avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral character doesn't intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy. To do so, he would have to be motivated either by good (and a desire to liberate others), evil (and a desire to make others suffer), or be lawful neutral. A chaotic neutral character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally random. He is not as likely to jump off a bridge as to cross it.

Chaotic neutral is freedom from both society's restrictions and a do-gooder's zeal.

And that kind of explains why I am here:

The pay is good.
All expenses are covered as far as room and board is concerned (my suite in the volcano has a great view).
Hardware/software budget is limited only by what the shock troops can secure.
The work is challenging.
If anyone writes their password down on a post-it under their keyboard, I can have them killed.

...not that I have been responsible for anyone's death mind you, but it is good to know the option is there.

Linux: Not Evil Enough?

2006-02-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges of working in an evil organization is that the moves you make are evaluated for their evilness more than any other criteria, be it efficiency, economy, or security.

This has made introducing Linux to our operation difficult. You see, with all the community good will and copyleft licensing involved, Linux just doesn't give off enough of an evil vibe to my bosses.

I've tried pointing out the large corporations that support Linux such as Oracle and IBM, but up until now my bosses just haven't been convinced of the evilness of Linux enough to let me move some of the systems away from Windows. Add in the fact that Linux is free and therefore cannot be stolen (which takes the fun out of the acquisitions process), and you can see why until now I have been unable to get it into our servers.

I say 'until now' because I recently found a glowing testimonial for switching to Linux from a supervillian:

http://www.ubergeek.tv/article.php?pid=54 (Requires Flash)

Nothing like a good peer endorsement to convince your bosses. Looks like I'll be getting Linux onto some of the servers over the next while.

Upgrading the Door Control System

2006-02-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

I've started my first major project as the new evil systems administrator. It seems that it is not too uncommon for our various guards and grunt staff to either get seduced or knocked unconscious and have their keycards stolen, allowing some unwanted element to waltz right into our facility. So, it's time to look at a new access control system.

The old system had a few flaws:

1) A mixture of keycard and handprint scanners were used, which resulted in keycards being stolen and/or staff being knocked out and their hands being placed on the scanners.

2) Shooting the door control terminals resulted in access being denied to those on the opposite side of the door from the terminal, in spite of the opposite side of the door having a working terminal.

3) Keycards open all the doors in the entire facility. Any interloper who gets their hands on a card can go anywhere. This has almost shut things down around here in the past.

4) Some interlopers would bring along geeks who would either crack open the door control panel and short the wires to open the door, or insert a keycard with an attached ribbon cable and PDA to brute-force the system.

I've been looking at a number of options, gauging them for reliability, effectiveness, and evilness. Unlike system at my old job, we not only need to keep doors from opening to unauthorized personnel, we also need to identify interlopers as quickly as possible and possibly even dispatch them in an automated fashion.

So here's the plan so far:

1) No more hand scanners. At first I thought of moving the hand scanners to a height of six feet, making it more difficult to get an unconscious staffer high enough to place their palm on the scanner, but I'm guessing someone would just cut it off instead. Besides, seems some people can defeat the systems with something as simple as a gummy bear anyway.

2) Two-part authentication. Something you have and something you know. We'll add keycards to all doors and require a PIN number in addition to the swiping of the card.

3) Actually, make that three-part authentication. I recently saw this article at Slashdot, discussing the use of injectable RFID tags for access to a company datacenter. Such a system is certainly evil enough for use in our facility, but just to keep things secure, we'll be calling the injections a 'vaccination' or 'antidote' so that the guards and whatnot do not know they are tagged. What they don't know they can't discuss while a hidden intruder listens.

The real benefit of the injected tags is that they introduce a three-part authentication scheme where even swiping a keycard and entering a PIN is ineffective if the unknown RFID tag is not present. We can also use the system to weed out intruders wearing the uniform of a staff member by setting up motion activated RFID readers. If the system detects a person nearby, but no RFID tag is detected, we have an intruder.

4) All door control panels will have tamper sensors to detect the panel being opened to prevent bypassing. All panels are in constant encrypted communication with the central control machine and any loss of communication will trigger a security alert. In addition, shooting a panel enough to damage it will only result in the door being inoperable from the side that was shot. Since the door locks are not routed through the panels but wired directly to the central control machine, authorized personnel could always radio in for the door to be unlocked anyway.

5) The system will have limitations for when a keycard/PIN/RFID combination can be used, where it can be used, and how many failed attempts can be made to gain access. Violations of any of these will result in either a security alert of the automatic termination of the person attempting access.

I Miss Fry's

2006-02-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you something, I've been at this job for two months now and I really miss Fry's. Not because Fry's was an awesome electronics and computer shop, more because at least it was local.

Working in a hollowed out volcano for an evil genius has its benefits, don't get me wrong, but you are local to nothing. No going out for lunch, no stop by the Apple store to check out the latest iPod, no running to Fry's when you just need a switch.

Heck, I'm lucky I can even shop online. The problem with a secret base hidden away in an uncharted patch of ocean is that it's really difficult to get any of the big online stores to ship to an undisclosed location, and the evil powers that be only trust other evil powers that be.

I finally convinced my bosses to let me order from Amazon by pointing out their one-click patent, which they declared was evil enough to give Amazon a shot.

Prior to that I had to make requests for hardware and wait for some shock troops to get around to stealing it. While that seems like a fair solution, the typical grunt can't tell a managed gigabit switch from an unmanaged 10/100 switch and half the time the stuff came back with bullet holes and shrapnel in it.