Posted on 03/28/2006 9:07:54 AM PST by N3WBI3
Oklahoma city threatens to call FBI over 'renegade' Linux maker Our mistake is YOUR problem By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View Published Friday 24th March 2006 20:20 GMT New year, new job? Click here for thousands of tech vacancies.
The heartland turned vicious this week when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker Cent OS. Problem is CentOS didn't hack Tuttle's web site at all. The city's hosting provider had simply botched a web server.
This tale kicked off yesterday when Tuttle's city manager Jerry Taylor fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff. Taylor had popped onto the city's web site and found the standard Apache server configuration boilerplate that appears with a new web server installation. Taylor seemed to confuse this with a potential hack attack on the bustling town's IT infrastructure. SPONSORED LINKS
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"Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else from accessing it???," Taylor wrote to CentOS. "Please remove your software immediately before I report it to government officials!! I am the City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma."
Few people would initiate a tech support query like this, but these are dangerous times, and Taylor suspected the worst. (Er, but only the world's most boring hacker would break into a site and then throw up a boilerplate about how to fix the hack.)
CentOS developer Johnny Hughes jumped on the case and tried to explain the situation to Taylor.
"I feel sorry for your city," he replied in an e-mail. "CentOS is an operating system. It is probably installed on the computer that runs your website. . . . Please contact someone who does IT for you and show them the page so that they can configure your apache webserver correctly."
That response didn't go over so well.
"Get this web site off my home page!!!!! It is blocking access to my website!!!!~!," Taylor responded, clearly excited about the situation and sensing that Bin Laden was near.
Again, CentOS jumped in to try and explain some of the technical details behind the problem. It pointed Taylor to this page, saying it was the standard page for a web server and noted that it provides instructions on how to fix the problem. The CentOS staffer suggested that Taylor contact his service provider or have an administrator look into the issue.
That response didn't go over so well.
"Unless this software is removed I will file a complaint with the FBI," Taylor replied.
Later he added,
"I have four computers located at City Hall. All of these computers display the same CentOS page when attempting to bring up Tuttle-ok.gov. Now if your software is not causing this problem, how does it happen??? No one outside this building has complained about this problem. This is a block of public access to a city's website. Remove your software within the next 12 hours or an official complaint to the FBI is being filed!"
And later,
"I am computer literate! I have 22 years in computer systems engineering and operation. Now, can you tell me how to remove 'your software' that you acknowledge you provided free of charge? I consider this 'hacking.'"
After a few more exciting exchanges, CentOS managed to track down the problem for Taylor. It turns out that hosting provider Vidia Communications is running CentOS on some of its servers and had not configured the Tuttle web site properly. CentOS informed Taylor of the situation, and, a day later, Taylor had calmed down.
"The problem has been resolved by VIDIA who used to host the City website," he wrote. "They still provide cable service but do not host the website. The explanation was that they had a crash and during the rebuild they reinstalled the software that affected our website."
"I am sorry that we had to go through the process and accusations to get the problem resolved. It could have been resolved a lot quicker if the initial correspondence with you provided the helpful information that was transmitted in the last messages. My initial contact with VIDIA disallowed any knowledge of creating the problem."
Er, so despite the fact that CentOS went out of its way to figure out the problem for Tuttle, Taylor still places the blame on CentOS for not fixing the problem - that it didn't create - sooner. In addition, Taylor didn't really start off the whole process on the best foot despite Tuttle being a town "Where People Grow - Friendly!" Grow friendly, threaten to bring in the FBI at the drop of a hat - what's the difference?
As of this writing, one Tuttle web site still had not been fixed, although you can find the charming Tuttle man Taylor over here.
Taylor has yet to respond to our request for comment.
It seems that Tuttle has quite the hacking epidemic on its hands. The Tuttle Times newspaper's web site, for example, has had its Forum section cracked. Click at your own risk to see it or have a peek at our screen grab.
To see the full transcript of the web server war, travel over here. It's classic reading. ®
LOL!
Googling "tuttle ok" gives this episode as the seventh result. Googling "tuttle ok web site" gives the complete transcript at the top, so "I feel lucky" on it sends you straight to it. You just have to love the 'net. The news of stupidity or malfeasance on the part of government officials spreads fast, and exponentially.
This guy was the cause of his own international shame.
User-submitted. BTW, even the Mozilla people refer to them as "techno-industrial" artwork. I told you I remembered this style, because I was involved in setting up a lot of techno/industrial events, parties and concerts. I made some flyers using this style. It fits well, because the industrial motif of the old propaganda artwork fits the name of "industrial" music. It also helped that we put on some of these parties in deserted industrial areas. Nice theme all around. How to have your partying make you money.
In short, it's about a graphic arts style, not politics. Now drop it and do not bring it up again unless you have yet another overriding desire to make yourself look stupid.
I use them, currently, but I don't love or hate them. I recognize what the are, being the standard software product on the majority of the world's computers, and being an American company which is much more desirable than having the UN provide "free" software to everyone instead.
And you can even alleviate your open source paranoia by going with a superior, more secure closed-source browser.
I use Opera some. I installed the latest on one of my systems at home the other day, and 4 new pieces of spyware showed up on my next daily scan, first time that had happened in months.
We've firmly established that you don't even know the major tools of computer security, so don't even go there.
HA! You established your opinion is running software from Russian hackers is desirable, I argued it isn't. It's obvious who's right on that one.
No he wasn't. CentOS did not handle this professionally whatsoever. Not only did they not properly respond to his original plea as a vendor should, they leaked this to the internet to try to humiliate the guy. Of course, it is the 2 bit copyleftists at CentOS we're talking about, so no one should be surprised.
That's not user submitted, neither is their "Give to the code and the code will give to you" motto/manifesto.
http://www.mozilla.org/banners
BS. Any sane person reading that thread can come to one conclusion--despite the CentOS support team explaining to this hack (exactly what he is) that it wasn't their problem.
Of course, if said hack would've pulled his head from his rectum and not outright threatened to whip out the FBI over something so petty, that nasty exchange might not have gotten to where it did.
The whole problem turned out to be between the keyboard and the chair. Funny how you seem to be more than happy to blame everyone else--except for Jerry.
These come straight off the official Mozilla page, today:
They're banners for people to d/l Mozilla code.
This kind of grunge style--showing up in clothing, technology, graphic design, etc. is very popular this day in age--especially among my peers. A lot of posters for events are designed with an industrial/grunge theme in mind.
Why? It's considered to be "in" right now, in case you haven't noticed.
So releasing customer e-mails onto the internet is what they're teaching you in school these days? Not a good business practice. Course CentOS isn't really a business is it? Probably some foundation, non profit hiding from taxes but wanting government assistance. If not now, probably soon.
Second, this Jerry guy isn't a customer of CentOS. He's a customer of the web hosting company--who is a customer of CentOS.
If this man had posted his gripe diplomatically instead of acting like a toddler during a nasty temper tantrum, I doubt this exchange would have been posted if this Jerry guy would have remained civil.
IMO, the CentOS team posted exactly becase it was that immature.
And it seems like he's even more immature:
They don't understand much about business if they're releasing customer info straight to the internet. Neither do you apparently, it must have something to do with that "everything must be open" philosophy they're teaching these days.
Probably pinned on your wall. Where was that, somewhere over in Europe where you usually get your news?
This guy had no good reason to contact CentOS directly. Though he had good reason to contact his ISP.
Apparently, you conveniently seem to miss this fact.
I tend to find that with regard to objectivity, British and European sources tend bear less obvious biases than their American counterparts.
I would expect the holier than thou opens source type to have the minimal techical knowledge it takes to post an article without dead links and advertisements. Guess not.
He was using their product, anywhere other than the bizzarro open source world he would be a customer. He was at least a user, who they don't care about. They will lose customers, or users, however you want to count them over this.
sed '/<DIV CLASS="n2">/{ N;N;N;N;N;N;N;N;N;N;N; /Golden Eagle/d }' post.html
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