Did You Hear The One About The Help Desk Chap Who Abused Privileges To Prank His Mate?
The Register, Monday, September 23rd, 2024
The result was no joke, thanks to a Microsoft glitch
Who, Me? Welcome, dear reader, to another instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers share tales of techie woe to remind you that your day could, in fact, be worse.
This week's hero is someone we'll Regomize as "Don" who worked the help desk at his county's largest employer some twenty or so years ago.
Like many help desks of the time, Don's employer used Microsoft SMS for remote management. Just to avoid confusion, that stood for Systems Management Server - not the Short Messaging Service for which those initials have become much better known. In fact Microsoft changed the name of the software in 2007, to avoid the same confusion. It's gone through more changes since, and is currently known as Configuration Manager.
Anyway, history lesson aside, what you need to know is that SMS allowed help desk staff to remotely operate any computer on the network for troubleshooting purposes. Techs could watch users work, and control their PCs if need be to help fix problems. Nifty stuff.
Obviously this also had great potential for hijinks.