Too Many Ports (Chapters 3 and 4)

Note: if you haven’t read chapters 1 and 2, read the previous post before this one.

Chapter 3

That night I slept easy under my covers on the third floor of the old sandstone. I always need eight hours of sleep to function properly, and I made sure I got it. It was a good thing I did, too, because more trouble was to arrive with the morning mail. At five minutes to eight I woke up and headed downstairs to see if Paul, the housekeeper, had made pancakes. On the way to the kitchen I noticed a thin envelope below the letter slot and grabbed it.

It was addressed simply to the name of the agency, in a thin spidery script. Inside there was only one piece of paper, a small scrap that said, “Internet not welcome, shutting down the network after ten. Come by.” Would I never see the end of this case? Slipping into the kitchen, I wolfed down the pancakes and headed out the door, pulling my fedora off the rack on the way.

At the client’s door I knocked politely and waited for her to come. When she did, I brusquely asked if 1.8 was causing yet more ruckus and received an affirmative answer. Seemed the silly chap still wouldn’t talk with the internet. Well, in my line of work enough is enough, so I skirted past the client into the house. I was getting much too used to that living room, so this time I just marched in, grabbed 1.8 by the shoulder, flipped him around and marched him out the door, into the car, and back to the old sandstone.

Once there, it was time to widen the scope of the investigation considerably. This called for a little hired help to do the dirty work, so I got out the phone and dialed for James and Kyle. Both are trusted hands in the business and I knew I could count on them to help me out. I gave them all the details on the case and told them to think it over. Now it was time to get back to 1.8.

He had been waiting calmly in the front room all this time. I wouldn’t have blamed him for giving me a little trouble, as I would have done myself in his position, but he booted up easy enough for me. First order of business was to verify that he was spyware and virus free; you never know who is bugging what these days. My favorite tools for the job are Spybot and Ad-aware, both of which I employed, as well as AVG. 1.8 didn’t complain to the questions and he came up clean. Either he wasn’t hiding anything or he could keep mum with the best.

Two could play this game though, so I offered him a drink. He said he would take a gin and tonic and I went into the other room to mix it. One part gin, two parts tonic, and a smidgin of f8 to take him into safe mode. It worked like a dream and 5 minutes later I had him running calmly without any extraneous programs when I made a startling discovery. It seemed only part of him didn’t want to talk to the internet: after 10 minutes he stopped talking with HTTP, but HTTPS worked fine.

The phone rang as I was pondering this. It was James calling back with his suggestion: to try rebuilding the TCP/IP stack. Moments later Kyle phoned in with some ideas about netstat. Mulling both over, I went back to 1.8.

I’ll spare you the details of that afternoon, but rest assured that I tried everything in my book. The case seemed hopeless. Safe mode, IPSec, TCP/IP, power management, nothing seemed to help. That evening, 1.8 was escorted to the guest bedroom and put under lock and key as I went to bed despairing.

Chapter 4

The next morning I awoke with an idea. After poking my head in on 1.8 to make sure he was still asleep, I meandered downstairs to think it over. The situation was this: ten minutes after connecting to the internet, 1.8 decided he didn’t want to talk with it anymore and shut down all HTTP traffic on port 80. Everything else–SSL, ping, and the works–still operated freely. What could possibly be causing the problem? I couldn’t tell, there were just too many ports. There was only one solution for a problem like this.

After breakfast, I sent Paul up to 1.8 with some poached eggs for the “guest” and called James and Kyle to confirm my suspicions. Both agreed with me, and so the rest of the day was spent making preparations.

That evening all the interested parties were gathered to the old sandstone. Fifteen minutes before we were to begin, the client appeared and I showed her to the red leather chair across from the desk. On the other side of the room several smaller yellow chairs were lined up for the other guests. Both appeared within a few minutes: first Kyle and then a small Indian woman. It was time to begin, so I sent Paul to bring 1.8 down from the spare room.

To begin, I gave 1.8 the option to give up the secret and start cooperating, but it was no go. He was a stubborn scalawag and he was going to pay for it. Upon request, Kyle stood up and pulled several CDs out of his pocket and passed them across the desk to me, who then passed them to 1.8. He glanced sideways at me and examined the disks, which said “Windows XP Home w/ SP1″ on the front.

As even my threat didn’t scare him, there was nothing for it but to continue with the reinstall, so I popped the disk in the drive and started the process. It all went smoothly until Windows decided it wanted to be activated, which I had hoped to avoid. But I was prepared for the occasion, so I turned to the client and asked if she had brought along Baldy’s old side panel. Luckily the trash hadn’t been collected yet and she had managed to find it, because I hadn’t anticipated needing old Baldy again until that morning.

This was where the evening was going to get a little tricky. I took the panel and, turning to the little Indian woman, read out the numbers. “5Q8PY-87X7L…” and so on. She looked at me suspiciously and asked how many machines this would be installed on. “Just this one,” was the reply, and she accepted it. Soon she was giving me a string of numbers from a card in her pocket, “86022-92344….”

Soon it was all over. 1.8 was sitting there, slightly dazed, with a brand new operating system on him. In a few minutes I had all the other software I needed installed and turned back to the client. He was done, I informed her, and there wouldn’t be any more trouble with him. It was a difficult solution, but had worked out in the end.

She thanked me and insisted on paying a bonus. Not that she had to; as I said before, when I start a job I finish it. And this case was over, so it was time to finally enjoy that cold glass of milk.

The end.