BUSTED

[ruinexplorer]

While I understand that getting in trouble for what someone else did sucks, and I have experience in that department, you shouldn't have left your computer like that. I hate to sound like a hardass, but with the way the world works now, it's pretty simple for someone to walk right up to it and do something they shouldn't, as evidenced by what happened to you. I'm paranoid about leaving my laptop places running for that very reason.

All too well said. I had the misfortune of finding that people had been using my computer to download very questionable items. The way the IT people had set up our network, my computer was the print server, so I couldn't lock it out while I stepped away. It seems that there were technicians who found this out and took advantage of it while I was away working.

I never got to clear up that mess because I was "allowed to pursue other employment" because of a "difference of opinions". Yeah, they wouldn't fix certain safety issues, so I reported them and I was let go a couple weeks later.

 

[avkid]

I never got to clear up that mess because I was "allowed to pursue other employment" because of a "difference of opinions". Yeah, they wouldn't fix certain safety issues, so I reported them and I was let go a couple weeks later.

Ever heard of whistle blower protection?

 

[silvrwolf]

Ever heard of whistle blower protection?

Go on. . . . .

 

[avkid]

This explains it better than I can:
http://jobsearchtech.about.com/cs/labor_laws/a/whistle_blower.htm

 

[LightingPenguin]

I had a similar incident. I used my entire school bandwidth in about 5 hours, and they banned me from the network for a week. FUUUN. The tech people were cool with it, cause they also torrent at school, but they just told me to cap my D/L speed

 

[dvsDave]

This is a great conversation. There are a couple suggestions that I presented to my IT department back at school that they helped us implement because they were happy with the security arrangements that we proposed.

Note You will need a competent IT department to pull this off.

1. We identified the best port for a wireless router (in terms of location to cover the whole theatre) and asked the IT department to put that port in a DMZ which allowed us internet access, but not access to the school's network (which was controlled through Active Directory)
   
2. The IT department balked at that till we presented the second part of our plan. The IT department was given the password to the router's controls and we set up a rule for capping the bandwidth per user to 80 kbps for internet access during school hours and 400 kbps for after school hours. (it was a big school with a nice fat OC-1 pipe because we were located very, very close to our upstream provider)
   
3. We also had to enable the content filtering that was built into the router for basic categories like pr0n, hate, and stuff like that. One thing to note here is to check that any sites you go to for theatre help and advice like controlbooth.com or a manufacturers site isn't being blocked, and check them while the IT guy is there setting things up.
   
4. We also had to justify this arrangement with the administration before they would sign off on it. We had performances come in and guest designers who needed to retrieve emails with design notes from the internet and couldn't, we needed access to sites that were normally blocked on the network like DIY sites that explained a project (but other content on the site could be considered hacking, we had to show examples) The other justification was to bypass the QoS (Quality of Service) settings that the school network had imposed on the computers talking to each other on the network. (to prevent some enterprising students from setting up a game like unreal tournament or Tribes and using one of the computers as the server) We claimed we needed it for media streaming, but we just wanted it for LAN parties after hours

 

[LightingPenguin]

QoS will be the end of me, I swear it.

Those are great idea Dave, and actually something I would consider bringing up to my IT department. Thanks for those. Especially the router in the theatre. While our entire school does have wifi, its fairly week in the theatre and dies occasionally.

Thanks

 

[renegadeblack]

command [windows] + [L]

For some stupid reason, our school disabled that for students. I have no clue why, the security policy at the middle school allowed us to, but at the high school we can't. We also can't right click. Anything.

Me and the IT folk at the middle school had a nasty issue in middle school. I figured out how to change the local administrator password (they didn't disable net users) and I would log in as the administrator, change the screen resolution to something tolerable, and log back in as myself. Well, a friend of mine tried to send a message to the entire school using net msg and it only made it to a few of their servers, they thought it was me, and then found a couple of tools I was playing with on a computer that we had for a slide show we had on our school TV station. I tried to tell them that the only thing that I did was change the local admin password and that I didn't know the global admin password. In the logs, all they had was the user that logged in, not the domain they logged into. They didn't believe me, I told them I'd show them what I did, they just stuck with accusing me of knowing the password.

The guy who ratted me was friends with me and he was sorry that he had to rat me out. Later he told me that he was suspended from school for sending out a message to all of the computers We were all sitting in the lab after a show and he was sending us messages and remote controlling our computers with some similar tools as I had.

In the end, my account was suspended for the majority of the year and as punishment (the other was to prevent me from doing more spiteful damage) the booted me from the tech crew! I later learned that the head IT person at the HS wanted me to not have my account for the remainder of my school career but they told her that was unethical. When I got to high school, she always gave me an attitude but I've since heard that the reason she's been so nice to me lately was because she was given a talking to. I will never forget one time going down there because there was a problem with the route to my personal folder and the woman told the person who was helping me "Don't tell him anything, he's a hacker!). As I said she's since become much nicer, mainly because she's realized that I'm willing to help her. Might I also add that I've since been told the Administrator password officially?

As for the router thing, we installed one in our auditorium in a long forgotten port in one of the coves for an access point that was long gone. My sound guy was talking to the IT guys and they were talking about how they were trying to find this unknown access point. It got quickly removed and it is now sitting in my room. Our TD said to go ahead and install it because they'd take forever to find it, lasted a good 3 months I'm thinking about asking them to install one in the there again as it would be nice to have reliable wireless as opposed to the wireless that we get now which depends on the day of the week as well as the moon cycle...

 

[lightman02]

Well if the network guy was doing his job correctly you wouldn't even be able to get on the network with a stray computer, or at least get to the torrent sites through it. I've always told it how it is, if I was approched like that I would have said just that to the network admin. Probably might have got suspended but it would have been worth it, people love to tinker with things so if u have a network, better lock it down good, it's a big part of being a network admin. Basically the network guy is blaming you for not doing his job right in the first place.

 

[len]

Ok, i hooked mine up and walked away,

I'm surprised someone didn't steal it.

 

[Peyton]

Thankfully my brother goes to college with and is friends with the IT guy at my school, and we know each other somewhat.
its nice having contacts.