Submitted by The heartland turned vicious this week when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker Cent OS. Problem is CentOS didn’t hack Tuttle’s web site at all. The city’s hosting provider had simply botched a web server. This tale kicked off yesterday when Tuttle’s city manager Jerry Taylor fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff. Taylor had popped onto the city’s web site and found the standard Apache server configuration boilerplate that appears with a new web server installation. Taylor seemed to confuse this with a potential hack attack on the bustling town’s IT infrastructure.
can we please not just copy stories from the register? i already read this yesterday…
also, i noticed that if you go to http://www.osnews.com/recommendations_detail.php?news_id=14113 it says:
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/osnews/web/recommendations_detail.php on line 71
can we please not just copy stories from the register?
We? There is no we. I will continue to post whatever seems suited. El Reg and the Inq may not be to everyone’s liking due to their senses of humour, but i.e. the Sun Rock I/II stories have shown that they are pretty much reliable– if you ignore the obvious humerous articles they post in between.
Please stop these nonsense comments. If you have a problem with a site linked to, just don’t read the damn article (at the bottom of your browser you can see a link’s destination on mouseover, in case you didn’t know). Is it really that hard?
i already read this yesterday…
So, forgive my ignorance, but because you read it yesterday… I shouldn’t report on it today. Mmmm, now that’s what I call wrong logic.
It seems to me that the Reg is rather more reliable than the Inq. I can recall more than one recent story that’s come from the Inq that turned out to be either flat wrong or badly distorted / misquoted / typo’ed / something…
Why was the GP modded down?
1. The comment does not include personal attacks/offensive language.
2. The comment is not off-topic
3. The comment is not spam and does not include advertisements.
The tone, if anything, of the OSNews reponse is un-professional.
Time to get new IT staff and new town administrators that understand what is going on 🙂
The easiest way to do that would be to move to another town. B^)
Apparently the town official wasn’t computer literate at all, it’s amazing, I see this all the time. Just because someone can load an app or look something up on the web doesn’t mean that they “know” something about computers.
No what’s disturbing is that he supposedly owned his own “computer business” for a while.
My question is just how dumb do you have to be to see there’s a problem with your website, see a link, call the people on that link and accuse them of Hacking. That’ s like a robber breaking into your house stealing your stuff, and leaving you a name and address should you want to buy your stuff back.
Apache Default pages should all point to http://www.whitehouse.gov so all complaints can be registered at the top of the totem pole. What’s worse is that this guy would then call the white house and accuse them of hacking his computers.
Apache Default pages should all point to http://www.whitehouse.gov …
That might make more sense than you even realize. This city manager would fit in perfectly with the stories my mother tells me from working part time answering phone calls for the White House.
I’m on the side of the submitter, I don’t read the register so the fact that this sorry appeared here is new to me. The solution to the ‘ive read it before’ problem is to skip over the headline and move on to the next one.
Pesonally I like duplicate news postings on different sites because one will sometimes see a different reaction from the readers and this in itself is very interesting.
I would bet all my money that this guy is an MCSE. 😀
+1 vote!
This is just too good to be a 5.
CentOs is a great alternative to RHEL for either non-mission critical applications, or for people who can live without the need to pick up the phone.
Those who are just too cheap to pay for the support of an Enterprise Class distro should expect to get exactly what they paid for.
It’s sort of like complaining of poor service at the Dollar Store…..
You can’t fault the town for ignorance. You can fault them for being cheap.
Those who are just too cheap to pay for the support of an Enterprise Class distro should expect to get exactly what they paid for.
Ok… So if they want to blame their distro vendors for hacking them, they should pay for that ability?
The fact that CentOS is free is not relevant to this story, other than Taylor assuming that because it was free it had been put there maliciously …
Now, can you tell me
how to remove “your software” that you acknowledge you provided free of
charge? I consider this “hacking”. I have no fear of the media, in fact I
welcome this publicity.
IMHO I think it is fine to use a free (as in beer) OS, so long as the admin running it is competant enough to configure and maintain it without needing vendor support (although in this case it seems Vidia wasn’t up to it).
Those who are just too cheap to pay for the support of an Enterprise Class distro should expect to get exactly what they paid for.
It’s sort of like complaining of poor service at the Dollar Store…..
You can’t fault the town for ignorance. You can fault them for being cheap.
Actually it was the towns hosting provider which was at fault. The CentOS guy found this out for the amazingly rude and clueless city official even after threatening him several times. How’s that for support ? He must have the patience of a saint and a very thick skin.
Someone at the town chose the hosting provider. I am sure it was a cost concern.
And to be clear — I have *NOTHING* against CentOS. In fact, it is my distro of choice. Kudos to everyone there.
He should have told the moran to format the computer adn give him directions how to do that. And he wouln’t get in trouble with the law considering he was told to explian how to remove teh software.
I do not understand how people misspell ‘moron’. You don’t even pronounce it ‘mor-an’. moron, moran… *shakes head*
http://www.cityoftuttle.org Web Server: “This page is used to test the proper operation of the Apache HTTP server after it has been installed. If you can read this page, it means that the Apache HTTP server installed at this site is working properly.
If you are a member of the general public:
The fact that you are seeing this page indicates that the website you just visited is either experiencing problems, or is undergoing routine maintenance.”
Clueless Guy: OMG! WE’VE BEEN HACKED!!! SOMEONE CALL THE FBI!!!
MWAHAHAHAHA!!!
Seriously, the guy has no excuse for his harsh threats. Inability to read, maybe?
Oh, come now – don’t you know that Bin Laden is behind this kind of thing? ;D
I feel sorry for the folks at the FBI who are receiving frantic calls from the midwest (probably more than we’ll ever know)..
Power goes out – CALL THE FBI!!!
Water smells funny – CALL THE FBI!!!
Television reception get lost – CALL THE FBI!!!
Telephone gets cut – CALL THE … wait… …RUN!!! RUN TO THE FBI!!!
Tuttle Oklahoma, yeah, THAT’s a real target for terrorism. A backwards city’s website. Whoo!
I live in Oklahoma City. Tuttle’s not far away.
To be honest, I’ve never been there. I’ve never had occasion to go there. Actually, I think I might have driven through it once, but I had an eyelash fall briefly into my eye while I was in that area and I might have missed it.
However, as a result of this crisis, I did take the time to look up some info on our good neighbor, Tuttle.
Here is Tuttle on MapQuest:
http://tinyurl.com/hjzvf (Click on the star a few times to zoom it up.)
I’d no idea that Tuttle had developed into such a metropolis. No. Metropolis doesn’t cover it. Megalopolis would be a more accurate term.
Jerry Taylor is obviously a very busy guy. I mean… city managing that and all.
And Tuttle seems to have made itself a name, even having an entry on Wikipedia(!):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuttle%2C_OK
And if that’s not cosmopolitan, I don’t know what is.
I think we should give the guy a break, this time.
He’s done good. He’s shown good old American patriotism for his city, his citymen, and his loved ones.
My sarcasm sense is tingling.
Your sarcasm sense is good. 😉
“I consider this “hacking”. I have no fear of the media, in fact I welcome this publicity.
Just correct this problem and leave this system alone in the future.”
Somehow I don’t think he is appreciating now, well, unless he is running for Village Idiot this year. As for his demand, I would hope that the CentOS folks will contact his ISP and have them fulfill it.
For any one of us who has worried that good IT jobs are disappearing in America, here we see that, as long as one is willing to relocate to a backwards redneck village in the heartland (or thereabouts), there is opportunity. In fact, one can probably make a fortune while he or she is at it introducing such things as the wheel, book matches, velcro – – yes, it is a veritable gold-rush situation for masters of them newfangled “PEE CEE” thangs.
So…when do the “I wuz hax0red by CentOS, and all I got was this lousy apache placeholder” t-shirts arrive?
You have to admit that Jerry Taylor has done well for himself though – being semi-litterate, and an obvious oaf, he’s still landed himself a city gig. If only more of us could realize our potential this same way.
So now you can email MS when you get an IIS error and threaten them with the FBI.
Behold, the man:
http://www.Tuttle-OK.gov/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={CC5DEFB6-1B2A-…
Village-idiot-in-chief, anyone?
Seriously, send the city manager’s office a few CentOS CDs and tell them to check it out. The town could save some big bucks. Frankly, with a town the size of Tuttle, a stapler’s gonna impact the budget in a big way. A little free-software goodness could really help — uh, assuming the could find someone with a clue to install it for them.
Why did he continue to blame CentOS after they sent him several emails telling him exactly what the problem was and who he needed to talk to in order to fix it? Not to mention that the “error” screen pretty much tells the viewer exactly what’s happening and not to panic.
I certainly hope this guy gets fired as a city manager or at least reprimanded; if he can’t “manage” a tech support problem, how can he possibly manage a city?