Slashdot Mirror
University of Twente NOC Fire Arson
Lars writes "A 26-year old man from Hengelo has admitted to deliberately setting fire to the Network Operations Centre of University of Twente, last Wednesday. The fire gutted two wings of the building and devastated one of the fastest networks in Europe.
The arsonist is an employee of the University, which must come as quite a shock to those involved.
The University released a short statement to the press.
It mentions that the total damage caused is roughly 40-50 million euros (about the same in dollars) and that the guy was caught last Friday, when he tried to set fire to one of the faculty buildings."
Wouldn't going on strike have been a little more effective than burning down the office?
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
A few non - european services were affected as well - namely ALL security updates for Debain (the primary mirror anyhow) were offline for a while.
Brings up a good point in disaster recovery: How many organizations have machines at various places that they can't recover from a total loss?
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" -- George Orwell
According to the mIRC home page, their message boards and mailing lists were destroyed in the fire as well. It appears to have affected a large number of people.
I back this. Why the hell do we have 3 stories on some server room going up in smoke when more interesting stores like Nanotech Self Healing Cameleon Colour Changing US Tanks never gets to see the light of day? Hello?
Would you hear about his one man strike? Did you hear about is one man fire? Guess how many people would have the same set of answers as you. What he did (IMO) is wrong, but you can't really argue that he won't (eventually) be heard and by a large audience. It's very rare that people this wrong in their actions turn out to be right about anything, but if you think his objective was to be heard (and it's clear you do) then his risk/reward balance may be off, but you hear him (or will when slashdot posts the 19th update to this story).
The worst part was he burnt down the warehouse with toilet paper and lightbulbs. The insurance company refused to pay, because the school didn't perform even a basic background check which would have given away the man's background.
The worst part was taking exams in rooms to dark to power the solar-powered calculators. Some professors resorted to carrying lightbulbs from room to room.
In talking with a Disaster Recovery, quote EXPERT unquote, he said a little fact that quite surprised me: 62% of all technology disasters are premeditated by disgruntled employees, honest administrative mistakes, or lack of change control procedures. We build our moats around the castle, but we never think to install smoke alarms in the kitchen!?!?
If I don't post again before Thanksgiving, Happy Turkey day ya'll.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
You guy's are really considerate: fire destroys network, they do all their best to get it somewhat back to work and then you slashdot it back into oblivion.
Though the arsonist takes a huge part of the blame, i think the university also made some faults. Why put your servers in a building that burns that well? If you have so much expensive equipment, you should consider everything, including arson! A few days ago they were happy that no asbestos was released because it was removed shortly ago. But isn't asbestos a fire retarder??
Anyhow this fire is a huge problem for the university. When i was studying there 2 years ago, their biggest trouble was the financing of new buildings. They were supposed to build a new combined building for Physics, Electronics and Chemistry. When the drawings were almost finished they had to scap the whole thing. Right now several buildings are way beyond their lifetime and could technically be shut down to regulations any moment. Most buildings are already extended with temporary containers (Portacabins). And now this..... If they were a company this would certainly be their bankruptcy.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
My company is so paranoid about security on the main frame, all the local IT people are locked down to the point they almost can't work. Instead of worrying about logical security inside the system, I should send them the link to this story. This is what an employee would do if s/he were seriously pissed, not hack into the system. This sort of thing would be a mission critical disaster to any company. It really made me re-think my offsite backup storage scheme!
This happened in The Netherlands. He will be judged by a single judge, no jury. Having full access to lawyers who are not capable of making any money out of this beyond their reasonable salary. He will maybe even go to prison (not that likely though). Single person in a room. 4 Nice painted walls, a door with a friendly window. TV in the room. Possibly a window for a decent view of the outside world. 3 Good meals a day. Sports facilities and libraries. Guards without guns. Lots of therapeutic little jobs....so he doesn't f&^%#ng hate society when he gets out next month!
My name is Dam Backer. I am from The Netherlands and I switched to the US 6 years ago.
(all of the above might not be perfectly accurate, but it schetches an idea of the philosophy of the Dutch punishment system)
Hmm, I wonder if he'll actually be brought to trial or will get judged to be a nutter and sent to a mental hospital.
When I was at primary school in Colchester(UK) there was a spate of school fires in my area which the police believed to be arson. They got extremely excited when they realised that the headmaster(principal) of my school had visited each of the schools just before the fires. Obviously they questioned him quite closely but then couldn't find any evidence against him, so they started secret surveillance on his movements.
A couple of days into the surveillance, my school got burnt down completely and what the police saw was another teacher torching the school. Apparently this guy had flipped and he was trying to assasinate the headmaster by burning down any buildings that he visited. Not really the most efficient way of taking someone out, but that's madness for you.
I'm pretty sure he was judged to be clinically insane and sent away pretty much permanently....
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne