Spike

In 1997 a user by the name of Spike arrived on Redbrick. This writer cannot remember how Spike came to be on Redbrick for he was not, nor ever had been a student, but someone gave him a password and he was one of the best known Redbrick personalities and a Table regular.

Spike merits an entry in the Encyclopedia for the confused events surrounding his permanent disuserment and the shutting down of Redbrick. What is beyond question is that Spike hacked files in other colleges, allegedly TCD and Glasgow. His carrying out of this deed was traced back to his Redbrick account and great was the wrath and anger of CSD who pulled the plug on Redbrick and threatened to close it down. As it was the system was shut down for three weeks and restored only with several conditions.

The exact series of events has always been a bone of contention with Spike claiming that it wasn't all his fault, a stance for which there was some support, and others claiming that he was solely responsible. As a result Spike was banned from Redbrick and DCU's environs by the Committee.

At the time there was a great deal of anger towards Spike among the membership but time has healed many wounds though his name is still cursed by some of the older members.

--Cain

Singer kept a post from wibble from back in the day (well, over a year later, actually, but closer than today) when all this was happening, so here it is, in its entirety.

Newsgroups: redbrick.babble
Subject: Re: Encyclopaedia, with missing facts...
Date: 24 Nov 1999 22:07:46 GMT
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On 22 Nov 1999 10:31:02 GMT, <wishkah@RedBrick.DCU.IE> wrote:
From: Shaun Neary <velocity@oceanfree.net>

>>Spike merits an entry in the Encyclopedia for the confused events surrounding
>>his permanent disuserment and the shutting down of Redbrick. What is beyond
>>question is that Spike hacked files in other colleges, ...
>
>Schnipped I was busted with a password file on a glasgow account, which was
>actually granted to me as I was doing work on their site. So again, yet
>another cockup on your story.

Shaun Neary was found with a cracked version of the password file belonging
to a TCD server. I'm not totally sure how he was tracked down but it came
from the fact that he was trading cracked passwords on IRC and somebody in
TCD heard about him, traced his logins back to Glasgow, whose admins went
ballistic they had somebody like him on their systems. They were upset at
being accused of harbouring a hacker and traced his logins back to DCU
whose admins (CSD) went ballastic in turn. Initally CSD didn't have a Shaun
Neary on their books and believed it to be an alias for another well-known
redbrick user. I recall setting them straight on this fact (otheriwse that
innocent student could have been kicked out of DCU) and disusered Spike.

>>allegedly TCD and Glasgow. His carrying out of this deed was traced back to
>>his Redbrick account and great was the wrath and anger of CSD who pulled the
>>plug on Redbrick and threatened to close it down. As it was the system was
>>shut down for three weeks and restored only with several conditions.
>
>Actually reliable resources point to the fact that it was electricians that
>cocked up and CSD shut down the wrong section down (CS labs) which shut down
>mother for a while, This was confirmed by Andy Lundberg himself. So fucking
>print that as well while you're at it..

Total bullshit... as you're expect from Shaun! Redbrick servers weren't
powered off during the "spike" incident, it's network access was cut. In
fact all out-bound telnet access from DCU was cut if I recall correctly.
Redbrick was previously abruptly powered down (un-plugged) at a different
time due to suspected "lab room exam cheating" via our chat system, and the
fact that CSD couldn't contact an admin@redbrick to do the job for them,
and they hadn't any account with sufficent privledges on redbrick to
shutdown the system properly.

Just setting some facts straight :]

Wibble

--Emperor

Originally from the Encyclopedia