
How one guy with a 20yo telephone did $30m in damages in less than one night. - joshwa
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7vvti/what_on_gods_green_earth_gets_a_fucking_pl7/c07k5nn
======
smanek
There's definitely something missing from that story ...

How did the 'attacker' just happen to have a wardialer and know to use it that
night? Why couldn't the NOC just shut off that one guy's service? Why can't I
find any reference to this in the news? (they always love a good cracker
story). How was a company that big operating in such an ad-hoc manner?

~~~
gurtwo
I find hard to believe that during such a special night all the company's fate
depended on 3 guys with no backup and no direct supervision. If that's true,
it seems to me very unprofessional.

~~~
pavel_lishin
After reading The Daily WTF (and assuming those stories are at least 80%
truth), these sorts of tales don't really surprise me.

------
rmason
I ran the story by a local telco guy tonight who said the guy has the lingo
right but its bogus. He told me that two guys couldn't run a NOC with that
equipment for that level of calls.

He also mentioned there were some other technical errors in the story like the
fact MySQL was not used at all in the industry at that time and he doubted PHP
was either.

He said make it $800,000 lost in one night instead of $80,000,000 and it might
be a stretch but be believable.

------
jrockway
I think this is a "straw that broke the camel's back" type of thing. Three
guys getting some extra phone calls on one night will cost your company 80
_million_ dollars? That means there is something seriously wrong with your
business.

80 million dollars buys a lot of custom software to automate this sort of
thing.

~~~
biohacker42
What this guys said:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7vvti/what_on_g...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7vvti/what_on_gods_green_earth_gets_a_fucking_pl7/c07k8f9)

~~~
jrockway
Yeah.

I refuse to comment on Reddit, though, so I rehashed it over here.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Why the strong refusal?

~~~
jrockway
I really want to have intelligent discussions, but everyone over there just
posts stupid personal attacks when they disagree with you. If I'm going to
spend the effort composing a post, I want people to read an think about it,
not just make a snide attack. (FWIW, I am guilty of making TONS of snide
personal attacks on Reddit. The community rewards it.)

The thread that made me quit Reddit for good is this one:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7uvkz/to_stop_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7uvkz/to_stop_all_the_multiple_posts_why_not_add_a/c07htm2)

My post is definitely on the sarcastic side, but it did take me some time to
think about and compose. I just wanted to show that people aren't "idiots" for
using an ORM. In return, I get a personal attack from someone who has probably
never written a line of code in his life.

This just doesn't happen on HN. There are people with ideas that I disagree
with, but at least they have something more intelligent to say than "your
dumb".

So since I only have a finite amount of time, and I spend too much of it
replying to social news sites, I figured I'd give up the stupid one for good.
We will see how it goes.

BTW, I don't think _everything_ on HN is intelligent... but it is several
orders of magnitude better than Reddit. (I wrote a bit about this last night,
as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473023>). Also, I'm sure _I_
make stupid comments from time to time... but hey, nobody's perfect :)

~~~
rm999
That guy on reddit is a troll, and his comment was modded down. No free social
site will ever be invulnerable to trolls, but they must be ignored.

I post on both reddit and here, and I think your generalization that "everyone
over there just posts stupid personal attacks when they disagree with you" is
not constructive. Your original comment about how you refuse to comment on
reddit added zero value to the conversation about a telephone company from
2000 - all it did was start a thread attacking a competing website. Doesn't
this break the spirit of hackernews's rules on civility?

The mentality I sometimes see on here that "we are smarter than them" doesn't
make a better site. Do it, don't say it. Threads like this aren't
"intelligent," they are mean-spirited and off-topic.

Sorry, but the comparisons to reddit have been bugging me. I really want to be
a member of this site, party because I think its foundation of intelligent and
civil conversation is a great idea. But I see way too many comments that
wouldn't even be kosher on reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7necx/heres_a_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7necx/heres_a_thought_stop_talking_about_digg_we_arent/)

~~~
jrockway
> No free social site will ever be invulnerable to trolls.

I disagree. I have noticed a lot of troll comments on HN. A few minutes later,
I come back, and the comments have been killed (or even deleted entirely).

This is the way to deal with trolls. Instead of wasting my time getting upset
or composing a reply, I just never see the comment, and can focus on something
else.

> But I see way too many comments that wouldn't even be kosher on reddit.

Well, by those standards, I've never seen a comment on Reddit that would be
"kosher on Reddit".

HN is definitely not perfect, but I have a social news addiction and (compared
to Reddit) HN makes me want to kill a lot fewer people after reading it.
Metafilter actually makes me _like_ people (although there is really no
technical content there, so I need something else for that).

Social news can be done right, it's just that Reddit's community failed to do
that.

Edit, replying to this:

> Doesn't this break the spirit of hackernews's rules on civility?

HN has rules, but let's face it, no community ever follows the rules. The main
(unwritten?) rule here is "explain your thoughts in more than 3 words". If you
actually take the time to explain your thoughts, you are much less likely to
upset anyone, and other people are much less less likely to regret reading the
site. That is the most important thing for me, and I think others might agree.

I agree that this rant is attached to the wrong article, but that's how
conversations go -- sometimes you digress. The level of discourse is high,
however, so I don't think anyone is at all upset by this.

------
ShabbyDoo
I liken this story to the mortgage-backed securities mess/scandal/disaster.
Read [http://semyondukach.blogspot.com/2009/01/real-cause-of-
finan...](http://semyondukach.blogspot.com/2009/01/real-cause-of-financial-
crisis.html) \-- a link previously posted here on HN.

99.99% of the nights, this company could get by without a few $M of software
to automate these processes and protect it from extreme risks. However, it
couldn't survive even a single night of failure. It's like a player in an
online poker tournament who makes extreme and unnecessary all-in bets to steal
pots: The strategy works really well until the last time you try it.

I wonder if management/investors were really aware of the risk profile they
had implicitly accepted.

------
petercooper
The Sunday before thanksgiving is the biggest day of the year for people using
call cards? Not saying it's a lie but that sounds weird to me.

I'd have guessed New Years Eve/Day, Christmas Eve or something like that.. or
perhaps even the first day of the work year or whatever.

------
TimBowen
This is a really interesting story even if it is embellished or flat out
false, good read.

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brianobush
possibly an inside job? or by a competitor or contract channel (quest, etc.)

------
dhimes
I can't read any more. My bs detector is whistling way too loudly...

