Unrelated to part 1 – but the same genre.

Actors this time:

• File Cloud: A cloud service for syncing and sharing files. We won’t drop a brand name, will we?
• Client: Another user of File Cloud.
• [Redacted]: Once known for reliability and as The Best Network.
• Dark Platform: Wannabe hackers’ playground.
• elkement: Somebody who sometimes just wants to be an end user, but always ends up sniffing and debugging.

There are no dialogues with human life-forms this time, only the elkement’s stream of consciousness, interacting with the others via looking at things at a screen.

elkement: Time for a challenging Sunday hack!

elkement connects to the The Dark Platform. Hardly notices anything in the real world anymore. But suddenly elkement looks at the clock – and at File Cloud’s icon next to it.

elkement: File Cloud, what’s going on?? Seems you have a hard time Connecting… for hours now? You have not even synced my hacker notes from yesterday evening?

elkement tries to avoid to look at File Cloud, but it gets too painful.

elkement: OK – let’s consider the File Cloud problem the real Sunday hacker’s challenge…

elkement walks through the imaginary checklist:

• File Cloud mentioned on DownDetector website? No.
• Users tweeting about outage? No.
• Do the other cloudy apps work fine? Yes.
• Do other web sites work fine? Yes.
• Does my router needs its regular reboots because it’s DNS server got stuck? No.
• Should I perhaps try the usual helpdesk recommendation? Yes. (*)

(*) elkement turns router and firewall off and on again. Does not help.

elkement gets worried about Client using File Cloud, too. Connects to Client’s network – via another cloudy app (that obviously also works).

• Does Client has the same issues? Yes and No – Yes at one site, No at another site.

elkement: Oh no – do I have to setup a multi-dimensional test matrix again to check for weird dependencies?

Coffee Break. Leaving the hacker’s cave. Gardening.

elkement: OK, let’s try something new!

elkement connects to super shaky mobile internet via USB tethering on the smart phone.

• Does an alternative internet connection fix File Cloud? Yes!!

elkement: Huh!? Will now again somebody explain to me that a protocol (File Cloud) is particularly sensitive to hardly noticeable network disconnects? Is it maybe really a problem with [Redacted] this time?

elkement checks out DownDetector for [Redacted] – and there they are the angry users and red spots on the map. They mention that seemingly random websites and applications fail. And that [Redacted] is losing packets.

elkement: Really? Only packets for File Cloud?

elkement starts sniffing. Checks IP addresses.

(elkement: Great, whois does still work, despite the anticipated issues with GDPR!)

elkement spots communication with File Cloud. File Cloud client and server are stuck in a loop of misunderstandings. File Cloud client is rude and says: RST, then starts again. Says Hello. They never shake hands as a previous segment was not captured.

elkement: But why does all the other stuff work??

elkement googles harder. Indeed, some other sites might be slower – not The Dark Platform, fortunately. Now finally Google and duckduckgo stop working, too. 

elkement: I can’t hack without Google.

elkement hacks something without Google though. Managed to ignore File Cloud’s heartbreaking connection attempts.

A few hours later it’s over. File Cloud syncs hacker notes. Red spots on DownDetector start to fade out while the summer sun is setting.

~

FIN, ACK