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Misconfigured Webserver, Threats to Call FBI

Posted by Hemos on Mon Mar 27, 2006 09:23 AM
from the all-in-a-morning's-work dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Software The Internet Linux
the_harlequin writes "The Register is reporting that a city manager threatened to call the FBI over a misconfigured webserver. From the article: "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 CentOS. Problem is CentOS didn't hack Tuttle's web site at all. The city's hosting provider had simply botched a web server." "
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[+] Slashback: Vista Rewrite, Tuttle Travesty, Mac Botnets 269 comments
Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories including Microsoft denies Vista rewrite, Tuttle Oklahoma city manager still doesn't get it, MS Virtual Server slips and VMWare fills the gap, Samsung execs plead guilty to price fixing charges, Tux in retail part 2, a renewed bid to register the Linux trademark in Australia, OpenSPARC.net shades of the past, and a follow up on Mac botnets -- Read on for details.
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  • !!!!~11111!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mattygfunk1 (596840) * on Monday March 27 2006, @09:25AM (#15002451) Homepage
    "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.

    He forgot the 1s but the tilda was creative.

    • Re:!!!!~11111!!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by iapetus (24050) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:28AM (#15002475) Homepage
      Indeed. Basmati rice [tilda.com] always adds that personal (if slightly bizarre) touch to an e-mail.

      The tilde was quite creative too. :P

    • Re:!!!!~11111!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Vengeance (46019) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:28AM (#15002477)
      The guy is a real piece of work. I liked this:

      "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.'"

      22 years in systems engineering, but he hasn't got a clue as to how web sites operate. This guy epitomizes problems we all see every day: Incompetents who don't recognize their own incompetence. Then he compounds it by being an arrogant bastard and an overbearing, threatening weenie to boot.

      Nice.

      And these are the kinds of jackasses we ELECT to have power over us.
      • Well, probably 22 years on the mainframe a few decades ago. He doesn't know a thing about anything that isn't green and black and/or involve punch cards. I see a lot of those around where I work, although most of them are smart enough to know their skills are outdated, and don't pretend to know these new(er) technologies. Not this guy apparently.
      • The tendency of the average person to believe he or she is better-than-average is known as the "above-average effect," and it flies in the face of logic... by definition, it is impossible for a majority of people to be above average. The more incompetent someone is in a particular area, the less qualified that person is to assess anyone's skill in that space, including their own. Here is the summary of the study. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=406 [damninteresting.com]

        • Re:Interesting study on incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jsight (8987) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:57AM (#15002717) Homepage

          by definition, it is impossible for a majority of people to be above average.


          No, it's not.
            • It is perfectly possible for the majority of people to be above the mean [average] or modal [average] but impossible for the majority to be above the median [average].
              Average usually refers to mean [answers.com], as you're probably aware, but you're also right that people tend to be pretty loose with the definition.

              In any event, my favorite example for when talking about this sort of thing is this --

              Most people have more than the average number of legs.
              ... and it's not just most, but probably around 98%.

              In case an explanation is required (it shouldn't be, but some need one), most people have two legs. A few people have one or zero legs, but nobody that I'm aware of has three legs (we'll leave that joke alone) so the average (mean) number of legs that people have is 1.98 or so, and most people have more legs than that. The median and the mode are both 2, but the average is 1.98 or so.

              Ultimately, not everything has a nice Gaussian distribution [wikipedia.org].

              And as for `incompetent, and unaware of it', I'd consider those results to be pretty much common sense, or at least they mirror my experiences. One thing I've learned over the years is that it's not always about what you know -- it's also about what you do when you don't know (know how to look it up!) and most importantly, to know when you don't know. It's true that most of the really smart people I know know lots of things, but they also know what they don't know.

              As for Jerry Taylor, I can understand him not understanding the message he found on the web page. Yes, it's there in relatively plain English, but people do make mistakes. But really, if somebody responds to you politely and points out that they're not to blame and that somebody else is, perhaps you should at least consider that they might be telling the truth and check into that before continuing the tirade. And his `apology' (I use the term lightly here) at the end (the site is down, but I read it earlier ... it was `it's unfortunate that it took all these accusations to get to the truth' or something like that) ... if there was ever any doubt before, it tells us a lot about how Jerry responds to people who point out his mistakes. Jerry may have welcomed the publicity then, but I doubt he does now. I wonder if he even has a job anymore.

      • Re:!!!!~11111!!! (Score:5, Funny)

        by amliebsch (724858) on Monday March 27 2006, @10:15AM (#15002858) Journal
        This guy epitomizes problems we all see every day: Incompetents who don't recognize their own incompetence.

        I doubt we all visit Slashdot every day.

      • Re:!!!!~11111!!! (Score:4, Funny)

        by Shawn is an Asshole (845769) on Monday March 27 2006, @12:22PM (#15003910)
        This guy sounds like many of the people I work with...

        (over the phone)
        User: My password doesn't work!
        Me: Is the capslock on?
        User: No.
        Me: Are you sure? Please check and make sure it isn't on.
        User: It's not on.
        Me: I'll be right over
        /me drives over
        /me looks at keyboard
        Me: You're capslock is on.
        /me turns it off
        /user logs in successfully

        Or this:

        (over the phone)
        User: The server is down. Come over here and fix it.
        Me: Let me check
        /me ssh's in and checks the servers. Nothing wrong. Ping user's computer. Nothing wrong.
        Me: Everything looks fine.
        User: No it's not. The server is down.
        Me: Can you be more specific? What can't you access?
        User: The server. Fix it.
        Me: I'll be right over.
        /me drives over
        User: See, it won't come up. Fix it.

        (The problem? The user is trying to access some website that isn't responding. Somehow I'm responsible for every server on the Internet...) /me wants a new job.

        • Re:!!!!~11111!!! (Score:5, Funny)

          by Coyote (9900) on Monday March 27 2006, @01:15PM (#15004331)
          Alrighty then, allow me to recount my fav Stupid User story, which took place in (where else?) Oklahoma:

          I was contracted to help a new guy learn the ropes in his new job as "engineer." One day he called and complained that his mouse didn't work. I asked a few questions to get a hint what it was or wasn't doing, expecting it to be unplugged, dirty or just plain broke. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it, and I finally asked, "OK, what is it doing that makes you say it's not working?" He answered, "It just doesn't work right."

          I offered to make the hour drive at my usual rate, and he agreed. I went to his office and asked him to show me what was wrong. He was holding the mouse SIDEWAYS, so every time he moved it, the cursor went 90 degrees from the direction he wanted, and he said, "See? It doesn't work right."

          I thought to myself, "Hunh, I didn't think to ask THAT one, so much for the 'intuitive interface," turned the mouse, said "Now try it."

          Yes, it does sound too bizarre to be true, but remember... it was in Oklahoma.

          • Re:!!!!~11111!!! (Score:4, Funny)

            by killjoe (766577) on Monday March 27 2006, @02:48PM (#15005105)
            True story.

            User: My computer won't come on.
            me: Did you plug it in?
            User: Yes.
            Me: What happens when you turn on the computer.
            User: It makes a weird sound
            Me: I better come over and take a look.

            I go over and turn the monitor on for her. The weird sound was the hard drive turning on and the initial beep.

          • Customer Service stories (Score:4, Funny)

            by Macgrrl (762836) on Monday March 27 2006, @07:16PM (#15007427)

            some of my favourite - it really happened to me - IT customer service stories.

            I spent a year or so working in a retail computer outlet in a large discout chain (I blame Apple for this, it was during their flirtation with selling Apples through non-reseller chains). It was during the same period that IBM compatibles changed from 5.25" to 3.5" floppy drives. I had a customer come in and buy a new 3.5" drive one afternoon. The following day they came back with the drive asking for a replacement, as it was clearly faulty. They complained that they had installed in into thier computer and tried to use their exisiting disks in it and none had worked. After further enquiy, it turned out that they had found their 5.25" disks had not fitted in the drive, so they had cut them down with a pair of scissors to make them fit, having done so, they found the new drive incapable to read them.

            Same place, different customer. Came in wanting a warranty replacement on their new keyboard, it was giving erratic multi-keystroke responses. The keyboard was bent with a tire track across it.

            Same place, yet another customer. Sold them a new PC with a fax modem as one of the items on the component list. The following weekend they came back into the store to find me. They had a question, could I perhaps show them on the floor demonstration unit where to load the fax paper.

            Same place (I hated the place with a vengence), different customer. Came in with their brand new Apple Powerbook demanading a warranty replacement. It was a PB 180 (I think) with the grey rectangular power brick adaptor. The computer had shorted out and they demended that Apple replace it. The AC adaptor no longer had the block transformer on the end of the cable, instread it had a standard 3 pin plug on the end. When asked why this was the case, they said that the block had not fitted to the powerpoint on thier skirting board, so they had cut it off (the transformer) and installed the new plug on the end of the cable. They could now understand why I refused to process the claim as a warranty issue.

            Different place, different customer. Was asked to do an insurance assessment on repairing a computer which had been sprayed with a chemical fire extinguisher some weeks earlier, it had not been cleaned in the interim...

            I've got dozens more, but they're my favourites. So glad I don't do retail any more.

        • Re:!!!!~11111!!! (Score:4, Funny)

          by KingOfGod (884633) <ldrada&gmail,com> on Monday March 27 2006, @02:49PM (#15005106) Homepage
          Oh, dude.
          Untill the end of December '05 I worked for this small company. My boss was one of those people who think they are absolutely never wrong, and bend their own statements if they are proved definitively wrong. He knows absolutely nothing about computers. Once, this happened:

          Him: I have a virus. Why do I have virus? You're the worst IT-man this company has ever had.
          Me: You dont have a virus. That's impossible per definition. Wanna bet $100? /me heads over to laptop. Does a full virus scan, finds nothing.
          Me: So, uh. Where is the virus?
          Him: [enters a website URL. Clicks a link, get's a website that says "YOU HAVE A VIRUS!" /me D'ohs

          At least I got $100...

    • The comic-sans on his website [tuttle-ok.gov] is hilarious as well.

      -Jesse

  • Yet another Oklahoma Joke (Score:3, Funny)

    by ralphart (70342) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:27AM (#15002465)
    This just confirms what we Texans have known for years...(ducking for cover).
  • Haha, I love how each of the Manager's replies show a complete ignorance of the previous, helpful message from the CentOS tech. I had a similar situation trying to explain to my uncle (who I was building a site for) about how SMTP works and why mail forwarding only worked before we changed his nameservers (since he only bought domain names and not hosting). I spent a painstaking 20 minutes explaining it in layman's terms, only for him to pause then say, "My email isn't working". The CentOS guy should get a medal for keeping so calm here.

  • That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:28AM (#15002486)
    That's nothing. Over the years I've been the victim of some ruthless Native American terrorist organization that always seems to hack my webpage within minutes of installing the server.

  • Non sequitur (Score:5, Funny)

    by dildo (250211) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:29AM (#15002490)
    For some reason, this reminds me of the time that a woman called my branch of the company and said: "We're all out of paper over here... could you fax some over?"

  • HAX (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bega (684994) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:29AM (#15002495) Homepage Journal
    "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.
    how do you remove a web site off of a home page? pls email me telling how this can be done, my home site was just hacked by apple :(

  • I wonder how long it'll take him (Score:5, Funny)

    by Weaselmancer (533834) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:30AM (#15002497)

    ...to complain about a DDOS attack. Behold, the power of Slashdot!

  • It probably was Buttle... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2006, @09:30AM (#15002507)
    The Department of Records [deadrabbit.org] must have the name of the website wrong and confused it with Buttle instead of Tuttle, we will correct it as soon as possible. In the mean time, we do not apologize for disrupting your webserver, and we will not reimburse you one penny nor will we fix the damage caused.
  • Funniest bit is where the city manager says: "I have no fear of the media, in fact I welcome this publicity."

    After reading through the exchange on the CentOS site [centos.org], I think he's going to regret making that statement. Normally, a dunderhead bureaucrat like this would try to sue or claim these e-mails shouldn't have been made public, but with this little statement on file...

    I'd call the guy a "dumbass", but he's not necessarily stupid, just ignorant and bullheaded. Of course, ignorant and bullheaded do a very good impersonation of stupid when combined.

    - Greg

  • Well Tuttle, OK *IS* a major terrorist target (Score:5, Funny)

    by elrous0 (869638) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:35AM (#15002544)
    Some people might accuse them of overeacting. But if you had Osama Bin Laden breathing down *YOUR* neck every day, you'd be pretty nervous too.

    -Eric

  • He tried emailing the FBI... (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitaldc (879047) * on Monday March 27 2006, @09:42AM (#15002597)
    ...but, alas, they do not have email!

    Can you imagine? [slashdot.org]

  • The PHB in question (Score:5, Informative)

    by sethadam1 (530629) * <adam&firsttube,com> on Monday March 27 2006, @09:53AM (#15002686) Homepage
    The PHB in question is the city manager. According to him: "My door is always open and I answer all calls."

    So... here's his info: City Manager Jerry A. Taylor [tuttle-ok.gov], and his email address: citymgr@cityoftuttle.org [mailto].

    Note that I am not "exposing" anything, all of this info comes directly from the publically available cityoftuttle.org website.

    PS. I can't believe we fried centos.org but not cityoftuttle.org.

  • Yelling!!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2006, @09:54AM (#15002693)
    If you noticed on his bio at the website - he was a manager for E-Systems. This is the way E-Systems managers manage - the yell about everything - get absolutely nothing done but yelling - but yell they do - until someone comes along and fixes it for them. He is classic E-Systems - everyone in the defense industry know about them - and has had to put up with their management technique. Finally the rest of you can start to deal with them too...

  • Tuttle? (Score:5, Funny)

    by microcars (708223) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:56AM (#15002712) Homepage
    its a mistake, it was supposed to read BUTTLE....

  • Help entertain the tech community (Score:5, Funny)

    by daputz (255605) * on Monday March 27 2006, @09:56AM (#15002714) Homepage
    To: citymgr@cityoftuttle.org

    Subject: Need your help in entertaining the tech community

    Jerry,
    I understand that you have 22 years of experience computer systems engineering and operation are are computer literate. I need your help in entertaining the Internet technical community.

    I think it would be hilarious if we loaded the default page on on a web server for the city (one with instructions on how to fix the problem) and then complained about it to the the maker of the operating system. Yuk, yuk! We can even (get this) whine that all the computers in the building show the same default page when you surf to the site. Bwaaahhhaaahhhaaa! Then (I can hardly contain myself) let's accuse the poor saps of hacking our server and threaten to call the FBI!!! Teeehhheeehhheeee!

    Oh, oh, my sides hurt. This is going to be great. You setup the server and I'll.... Oh, I'm just reading slashdot and see that you already done it. Well, I guess you thought of it before me. Good one.

  • comic sans (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BenjyD (316700) on Monday March 27 2006, @09:59AM (#15002730)
    The guy's website [tuttle-ok.gov] provides further proof for the "low IQ and use of Comic Sans" correlation.

  • Charge the city for technical support (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smelroy (40796) on Monday March 27 2006, @10:01AM (#15002745) Homepage
    CentOS should send the city a bill for their tech support time. After all, they wasted the time of a primary developer whose time could be spent much better. Of course the chance of the bill getting paid is slim to none but it is the thought that counts, right? I hope Johnny Hughes found the man's ignorance as funny as I do and was not overly annoyed with the knucklehead.

  • I thought I had seen him before.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by loconet (415875) on Monday March 27 2006, @10:15AM (#15002866) Homepage
    Here is a recent picture of our hero, Jerry [tuttle-ok.gov], and here is a picture of him [tiscali.co.uk] during his earlier years.

  • What are they talking about? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tuttle (973) on Monday March 27 2006, @10:30AM (#15002996)
    My website looks just fine.

  • Computer *literacy* (Score:5, Funny)

    by Schraegstrichpunkt (931443) * on Monday March 27 2006, @11:26AM (#15003509) Homepage
    I am computer literate!

    Um, sir, I don't think 'computer literacy' refers merely to the ability to read text on computers...

  • Also happens on the web daemon side (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Khopesh (112447) on Monday March 27 2006, @01:11PM (#15004296) Homepage Journal
    The thttpd (a lightweight Apache alternative) author has a similar story, but with more stupidity involved (see email history in link): thttpd author's "Attack of the Repo Men" [acme.com]

    • Re:This is wrong! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sethadam1 (530629) * <adam&firsttube,com> on Monday March 27 2006, @10:10AM (#15002823) Homepage
      Sorry, Builder, but all this shows is that incompetents shouldn't be left in charge of IT. I would say it demonstrates the exact opposite of what you say. Clearly the city manager is unqualified and ignorant. The open source project helped him -- for free -- even when he threatened litigation! Ultimately, CentOS solved the problem for him too, outdoing the ISP he presumably pays.

      I would argue that this furthers the cause significantly, and as an aside, encourages towns to take IT seriously.

    • Re:respect and dignity (Score:4, Insightful)

      by IgnoramusMaximus (692000) on Monday March 27 2006, @03:03PM (#15005221)
      Not a chance.

      If that man was merely deficient in his understanding of the situation, I would cringe at the state of civic appointments but would heed your advice and remain civil and polite towards him, as I would in most cases in my professional dealings, preserving the decorum of the conversation. That is because such decorum is what makes inter-personal interactions civil, friendly and as a result allows us to correct someone's gaps in education without insulting him.

      Unfortunately, Mr. Butthead chose to go ape at the first opportunity, displaying his obtuse arrogance and ample ill will, not to mention lack of any decorum to the point that any pretense of civility never existed. Add to this the insulting and egomaniac "apology", which seeks to blame everyone else for his wretched personality, combine this with his civil-servant status, and we have a situation where civic action, publicity and frankly, total destruction of his credibility in the public's eye is the only decent course of action.

      Although it is frequently not so, this case has nothing to do with our, Linux users's, attitudes and everything to do with his.

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