Who, Me? Do you check your emails before sending them? Re-read a dozen times but still that typo sneaks through? Welcome to a Who, Me? in which a reader learns that one mistyped letter can result in a visit from the legal department.
Our tale, from a reader Regomised as "Ali", takes place nearly 20 years ago, when he was in his first (and almost last) job in IT. His career, in a manner familiar to many, began on the helpdesk. And his company? An outfit that lurked behind the scenes for many of the personal websites that came bundled with the major ISPs of the era.
"We hosted about 1/3 of all existing websites at the time," he told us, "so if you had a little vanity site … we were probably the host."
Unfortunately for Ali, this was also the era of the SQL Slammer worm. One night the helpdesk lines lit up as customers found themselves unable to reach their sites. For those who don't remember the event, Slammer exploited a flaw in Microsoft's SQL Server (patched, but not applied everywhere) to cause denial of service on some hosts and generally slow down traffic on the internet.
Ali's helpdesk tickets up until this point had mainly consisted of users not knowing how to use the service: "Like how do I get my email, why can't I edit my site, what do you mean I need to own a computer to work on a website – I just bought a modem!"
"You know," he said, "all the usual BS that makes up about 90 per cent of all calls to the helpdesk."
Being a creative fellow, he put together macros...
Read Full Story: https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/22/who_me/
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