I wrote a piece of network test software for NASA on an internship. Now, I must here stop and say that the Johnson Space Center outsources their IT security to a contracting company, who is based out of another state, and who is batshit paranoid and completely unwilling to admit the existence of anything but Windows and Office. I had to escalate up three levels just to get authorization to hook up a computer running this scary thing called "Linux" to their network.
Anyway I built a test computer with two NICs in it: one was connected to the official network so I could get internet for Linux updates and to do research, and the other was connected to my private test network. While testing the software I wrote, which is capable of sending low-level "raw" ethernet packets, I sent 10,000 maliciously malformed IP packets from a MAC address of "00 00 00 00 00 00" to make sure I couldn't crash the other copy of my program receiving it across the test network no matter what it received.
Unfortunately, after hitting enter I realized I'd typed the wrong ethN port, and actually sent the 10,000 malformed packets across the official network. They weren't directed at anything, but they did reach the switch and probably triggered an IDS. Oops.
I found out later that the IT people, not content to just turn off my access, actually drove out and physically disconnected my ethernet cable from their switch!
Anyway I built a test computer with two NICs in it: one was connected to the official network so I could get internet for Linux updates and to do research, and the other was connected to my private test network. While testing the software I wrote, which is capable of sending low-level "raw" ethernet packets, I sent 10,000 maliciously malformed IP packets from a MAC address of "00 00 00 00 00 00" to make sure I couldn't crash the other copy of my program receiving it across the test network no matter what it received.
Unfortunately, after hitting enter I realized I'd typed the wrong ethN port, and actually sent the 10,000 malformed packets across the official network. They weren't directed at anything, but they did reach the switch and probably triggered an IDS. Oops.
I found out later that the IT people, not content to just turn off my access, actually drove out and physically disconnected my ethernet cable from their switch!