The festive season is upon us again, so I hereby present a yuletide tale of the age old battle between Good and Evil…

‘Twas the night before D-DoS, when all through the net

Not a rootkit was stirring, no activity yet.

The victims were chosen, the criminals dared

To hope cash from extortion soon would be theirs.

The targets were nestled all snug in their nets,

Protected from dangerous POSTs HEADs and GETs.

Their NSM sensors, all fed from a Tap,

Kept watch for traffic they knew should be zapped.

When into my inbox there arrived a stern warning,

“Give us your cash, or we’ll DoS you by morning.”

Away to the helpdesk I flew like a flash,

Afraid that my website soon would be trashed.

My lack of response to the blackhat’s demands

Caused him to issue the fatal commands.

Sitting alone in his t-shirt and jeans,

With his tower PC, and eight LCD screens.

Then his dusty old keyboard went clickety-click,

His army of trojans heeded his nick.

More rapid than torrents his botnets they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“Now Gumblar! now Koobface! now Storm Worm and Ozdok!

On, Clampi! On, Pushdo! On, Cutwail and Rustock!

Use all your ports! Fear no firewall!

Now DoS away! DoS away! DoS away all!”

As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,

Packets were inbound, my bandwidth sucked dry.

So back to the helpdesk in panic I flew,

Only to find that they were DoS’d too!

And then, in a twinkling, I heard through the panic

A cry from the desk of a worker less manic.

As he drew on his pad, his colleagues turned round,

Listened intently to what he had found.

“I know this sounds crazy,” he said through the din,

“I can disrupt the botnet, attack from within”.

“I’ve seen it before, in a film with a spy“,

“‘send spike’ is the answer; the trojans will die!”

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

As he hammered away on a keyboard from Cherry.

He pictured the blackhat – alone, unaware –

“Attacking my botnet? Surely no-one would dare!”

The end of a pen he held tight in his teeth,

It leaked ink that encircled his mouth like a wreath.

He sent spike on its way, and sat back from his desk,

Hoping to neutralise botnets grotesque.

He was chubby and plump, was our evil blackhat,

But his face turned to horror, he froze where he sat.

His botnets revolted and cackled with glee,

Changing his wallpaper to pictures of goatse!

He spoke not a word as the bots went to work,

They emptied the bank accounts held by this jerk.

Their final accomplishment was rather extreme –

They framed him for felonies and called in the SWAT team.

The blackhat defeated by our Hero so gallant,

Away to the pub they went – drink to his talent!

But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”



Alec Waters is responsible for all things security at Dataline Software, and can be emailed at alec.waters(at)dataline.co.uk



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