On Aug 6, 2009, at 10:19 PM, [email protected] wrote:
I have direct experience as a contractor where I have entered
many a co-lo; and was unimpressed with their security to say the
least.
I had constant and easy access to a large number of nameless servers,
it's a nobrainer to access keyboard/monitor pairs in many of these
places.
That would be vandalism. You didn't indulge in it, why would you
expect someone else in your situation to do differently? Or are you
lying to us?
Story time. :)
Several years ago I worked for a company here that had decided to
colocate a server locally (yeah, brilliant, in Albuquerque) instead of
getting a hosted server somewhere with better access. I wound up going
down there a few times to add RAM to the system. Apart from my
company, there were a smattering of other smalltimers with big tower
computers from Dell on this rack and off on the other side of the
facility was a fenced off area with four or five racks of Dell
hardware. The owner casually mentioned to me that the company who
owned the racks had something to do with airline ticket sales. I guess
because I chuckled at that, he also mentioned to me that the computer
next to ours was hosting the governor's re-election website. I thought
about doing something malicious, because I'm not a big fan of
Richardson, but decided it wasn't worth the trouble.
Later on one of the owners of the colo facility got bought out and
blew up. He went into the facility and ripped out the primary router,
then took the upstream cable and plugged it into another port on the
backup router such that the packets wound up going in a cycle. Then he
damaged the backup power system and flew out the door with the primary
router.
Not really taking a position here but your comments reminded me of the
story. I guess there's always a bigger jerk out there and sometimes he
runs your colo facility.
—
Daniel Lyons
