Rogue Game Server Admins Tell All

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Remember that article awhile back about a rogue admin running a game server on his employer's hardware? Well, NetworkWorld has posted a follow-up story featuring real life stories from various "rogue" admins around the country. Interesting reading, especially if you employ one of these people. :eek:

Mr. West: In the past we've had Team Fortress 2, Killing Floor, Counter Strike, Minecraft, and a few others. We've actually run the servers off of a few different boxes. As the company grew/changed we'd need to switch things over to a different box so as not to overload a production box with non-production processes. Obviously it's in our best interest to not cause downtime or other issues so as to not draw attention.
Click to expand...
 
Unless the people paying for those resources know how they're being utilized after-hours; it's stealing.
I wouldn't want to get caught doing that.
 
"Did you ever have any close calls where you almost got caught?

Mr. North: Yes, it was the result of an office prank where someone attached speakers to a tech's workstation and had them on full. I had the owner of the company in my office and the tech alt tabbed back into a game, which alerted the boss that something was going on. As he got up to go look, I had used VNC to shut down the workstation. I blamed the noise on a PC that was going bad and said that it did that from time to time, which resulted in money to upgrade our workstations. So it was close call and a blessing all at once."

AWESOME!!
 
Hmm...

I wonder if I know who Mr. East is.... :p

During my time at college there was a guy who worked for the IT department my friends and I eventually befriended.

He had some Quake2 (pretty highly ranked too) and later Counter-Strike servers running inside the IT department. I eventually became involved and built a few servers from spare parts and we placed them inside IT to host our Counter-Strike servers. We hosted a pretty large and active Counter-Strike community from these servers for a period of several years.

When I was involved it was kind of the "worst kept secret of all times". Everyone knew the servers were there. (well, maybe not the highest of the higher ups, but everyone else did.) We even had the tacit approval of the director of network security. I guess he figured if we could do this, we wouldn't get in other trouble and mess up his network, as well as if there were a few large servers on the campus, they'd use less of the precious external bandwidth being gobbled up by rampant Napster use at the time. (this was from 1999-2005 or so, I continued admining the servers for a few years after graduation, no idea how long the Quake 2 servers had been running before I was aware of them)
 
This happens in more companies than are willing to admit it. Back in the day we use to run Q3A servers all the time :)
 
Quikstrumental said:
Unless the people paying for those resources know how they're being utilized after-hours; it's stealing.
I wouldn't want to get caught doing that.
Click to expand...

I dont entirely agree. If the company was on a T1, and bandwidth was all that was being used, would that really be stealing if bandwidth is unlimited? Not sure these guys situations, but Ive never seen a T1 that was metered.
 
This is how my clan had their CS server, back in the beta days. However in our case, it was an extremely popular public server, full almost 24/7. I also would set up some UT demo servers on school networks at the ROP center...it would be funny logging in and seeing the 3 or 4 others that had done the same :p
 
I thought this was a pretty standard practice, or at least in the days where IT departments weren't so corporately "starchy". Hell, running a game server is pretty mild compared to other "standard practices". ;)
 
This does happen all the time *cough* *cough* not that I have done it or anything...

What I want to know is this original guy that was supposedly running a Black Ops server, where did he get the server code? It isn't publicly available, it doesn't ship on the media. There is only one legitimate hosting company, did he hack them and steal the binaries? Was there an inside man? *dun-dun-dun* I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. I haven't seen a word come out of the publisher saying he stole anything. Doesn't this seem a little odd in face of the original story?

Any thoughts? Links?
 
[KFKAS]Death-Speak;1037009767 said:
I dont entirely agree. If the company was on a T1, and bandwidth was all that was being used, would that really be stealing if bandwidth is unlimited? Not sure these guys situations, but Ive never seen a T1 that was metered.
Click to expand...

I guess the cost they would actually be adding to the company is the cost of the electricity to run the server...

Bandwidth is already paid for and not used after hours and they brought their own server boxes in...
 
I see such things as job perks - as long a it doesnt cause any problems, I dont see any problem.

 
This is alot like pirating MP3s, fact is that it is not yours and probably would not be approved by the CEO or president. But people try to justify it internally for all sorts of reasons. It could be a job perk but only if it was something requested and was cleared by all upper management usually this would mean written into your hiring contract. Other than that while it may seem minor it is no different then say stealing office supplies from work. And their could be examples of times when it created a real problem or a security breach.
 
What's your opinions Kyle and Steve?
Also, you can get free tier amazon aws for a year for game and voice server. I have tramspeak3 and dont go over bandwidth on a 50 man box
 
Rebel44 said:
I see such things as job perks - as long a it doesnt cause any problems, I dont see any problem.

Click to expand...

This is akin to using the company car for personal trips. Why not, the car has been paid for. The drive is paying for the gas. Why not? Simple, because it's not yours.
 
Companies should host game servers for low prices to make some additional money on the side lol.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037009809 said:
I guess the cost they would actually be adding to the company is the cost of the electricity to run the server...

Bandwidth is already paid for and not used after hours and they brought their own server boxes in...
Click to expand...


When I was in the NOC, the *cough* policy... or something, but the deal was we provide the iron, they let us plug it in to the router. Where we had a pair of dual OC-48s. Hell, I even had my own block of static IPs I could provision however I wanted to for "network uptime" and "quality of service" monitoring.

Then we got bought and things where good for a year or so.
 
the-one1 said:
This is akin to using the company car for personal trips. Why not, the car has been paid for. The drive is paying for the gas. Why not? Simple, because it's not yours.
Click to expand...

That's not an accurate comparison at all. Assuming the company car is the hardware and the gas is the data pipe. Cars wear out FAR more quickly than say a router. If your company was paying flat rate for unlimited gas used, in a car that did not wear out, nobody would care what you used the company car for.
 
we had a friend who wored on the back bone of time warner Road runner. we had a CS server on that. anyone who was in area got like a <10ms ping times. was awesome back in the day of early counterstrike
 
To my employees, who shall remain anonymous, who responded rather ambiguously here, I better not find anything on our servers when I come in tomorrow. j/k

There are always unspoken perks to a jobs, not something that is advertised or spoken about because it attracts the wrong kind of people. I tend to stay away from them cause I'm not a big fan of the grey area (at work, I'm like 2 different people), but I've had bosses come up to me after I was hired and hint at what I really can and can't do as long as it doesn't interfere or he gets wind of it. In other words; hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. I personally as management wanted to know what is going on so I can make sure it doesn't go out of control, but there is the question about liability. I don't consider these guys "rogue" per say, "rogue" is something dangerous like stealing and selling client data or opening the company wide to attack, but they have mention one of there top priority is security and QoS. The one thing that did tick me off is gaming at work that an employee alt-tabbed into at work while the boss was there.

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/
 
the-one1 said:
This is akin to using the company car for personal trips. Why not, the car has been paid for. The drive is paying for the gas. Why not? Simple, because it's not yours.
Click to expand...

I disagree - not quite the same. Most company vehicles that I've had access to allowed for personal trips. HOWEVER, you had to log the mileage, as the IRS considers it a taxable benefit. And I think, but am not sure, that the company can deduct the expense.
 
RangerXML said:
To my employees, who shall remain anonymous, who responded rather ambiguously here, I better not find anything on our servers when I come in tomorrow. j/k

There are always unspoken perks to a jobs, not something that is advertised or spoken about because it attracts the wrong kind of people. I tend to stay away from them cause I'm not a big fan of the grey area (at work, I'm like 2 different people), but I've had bosses come up to me after I was hired and hint at what I really can and can't do as long as it doesn't interfere or he gets wind of it. In other words; hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. I personally as management wanted to know what is going on so I can make sure it doesn't go out of control, but there is the question about liability. I don't consider these guys "rogue" per say, "rogue" is something dangerous like stealing and selling client data or opening the company wide to attack, but they have mention one of there top priority is security and QoS. The one thing that did tick me off is gaming at work that an employee alt-tabbed into at work while the boss was there.

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/
Click to expand...

And this is the right attitude to have: As long as the work is getting done, and the security of the systems isn't compromised, it's a non - issue, and a definite positive perk for the employees that really costs the company nothing, but does generate goodwill.
 
Being the sole "admin" here in the office I could easily do this.

With an DL360G6 with 2 Quad Core Xeons, and soon to be 16GB of ram, I could easily load up a VM and add some games.

Not such a bad idea....
 
I agree with everyone about the perks. Just like YouTube and other streaming sites. No it is not OK for you MR Joe employee to stream video, yes us in the IS dept can.....get over it ;)
 
rudy said:
This is alot like pirating MP3s, fact is that it is not yours and probably would not be approved by the CEO or president. But people try to justify it internally for all sorts of reasons. It could be a job perk but only if it was something requested and was cleared by all upper management usually this would mean written into your hiring contract. Other than that while it may seem minor it is no different then say stealing office supplies from work. And their could be examples of times when it created a real problem or a security breach.
Click to expand...

Mean people suck.

I think you've just made yourself out to be a good example.

Just imagine, how much nicer our world would be without attitudes like his.

Be reasonable? Being a jerk doesn't really contribute to society. I know first hand, I've been a jerk myself sometimes, and in hindsight I've realized it would have been better not to have been. Hopefully you will also find such wisdom someday soon.
 
Let me provide an example from another industry:

If you have a restaurant and you don't at least let your workers have one meal a day: they are going to steal food, period. If you do give them a meal they will appreciate it and like you for it. Either way, they still get the meal, why not benefit from it?
 
Not a game server, but when I was admin of a school network, I had SETI scheduled to run when they left the machines on at night. 36 cpus at my mercy!
 
the-one1 said:
This is akin to using the company car for personal trips.
Click to expand...
No, it's not. Not really. Only slightly, vaguely, similar. Bad anaology.
QUOTE=] Why not, the car has been paid for. The drive is paying for the gas. Why not? Simple, because it's not yours.[/QUOTE]
The toilet at work is not mine either, so I guess if I use it, you'd call me a thief.


PCs don't have tires that wear out.

When PCs crash, it's not as serious as when a car crashes (generally, and one would hope that these game servers are not being put on mission-critical single point of failure systems).

You're less likely to need a license and insurance to run a PC.

PCs don't often kill people when you have an accident.

Running a program on a PC is simply not the same as stealing a car.

If you "borrow" the PC and take it home for the weekend, that is a little more fitting to your analogy, but still not the same.

Mean people suck. Please stop being so mean.
 
CacaSapo said:
Not a game server, but when I was admin of a school network, I had SETI scheduled to run when they left the machines on at night. 36 cpus at my mercy!
Click to expand...

Those if us in the Cisco class were allowed to host game servers on the school network. Don't want to go to a pep rally? OK, head over to one of the computer labs and play CS, Quake, whatever someone had setup.

This all reminds me of school. If the work was done, and my grade was an A, then the teachers didn't care. In Calculus, me and my buddies had a poker game going every day in the back of class because we all had A's, everyone else was at their desks working. I liked going to school, I made money every day.

That was highschool mind you.
 
I think it's not outrageous to use the company connection to host game servers in the evening. This is how most of the game servers in the late 90s/early 2000s got their necessary upsteam bandwidth. Only recently have affordable broadband connections with gratuitous upload become popular.

I spent several years playing on Quake, Quake III, Counterstrike, BF1942 and Freelancer servers, and I have no doubts where %99 of the bandwidth came from. We have companies and universities to thank for the proliferation of those servers.
 
RangerXML said:
To my employees, who shall remain anonymous, who responded rather ambiguously here, I better not find anything on our servers when I come in tomorrow. j/k

There are always unspoken perks to a jobs, not something that is advertised or spoken about because it attracts the wrong kind of people. I tend to stay away from them cause I'm not a big fan of the grey area (at work, I'm like 2 different people), but I've had bosses come up to me after I was hired and hint at what I really can and can't do as long as it doesn't interfere or he gets wind of it. In other words; hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. I personally as management wanted to know what is going on so I can make sure it doesn't go out of control, but there is the question about liability. I don't consider these guys "rogue" per say, "rogue" is something dangerous like stealing and selling client data or opening the company wide to attack, but they have mention one of there top priority is security and QoS. The one thing that did tick me off is gaming at work that an employee alt-tabbed into at work while the boss was there.

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/
Click to expand...

Sounds like one of your employees lacks some common sense. Maybe you should consider replacing him... ;)

I'm all for work over play. That's what you come in to do each day, not screw around in a game. That said though, I would consider it a healthy experience and exercise adding that sort of thing to a datacenter without it having any noticable impact on the network or end-user experience. I'm okay with it as long as it doesn't come at the cost of business.

IT guys seem to get a lot of trash in my experience, so it's nice having that sort of perk or ability. I doubt that many of the people that do this ever take it too far.
 
I work for an IT service company and for testing we recently got a wicked SAN and 4 servers from Dell for being one of their top partners. Being in an office of 7 employee's with a 30Mbps fiber connection we have some serious spare capacity. VM capable servers with 32GB of ram each can never be wasted!

I asked my boss if I could provision on a couple public IP's some servers - he didn't care as long as I followed best practices for security and if his son could have a server that he wanted if need be :p

Did I mention that I love my job?
 
Zetro said:
I work for an IT service company and for testing we recently got a wicked SAN and 4 servers from Dell for being one of their top partners. Being in an office of 7 employee's with a 30Mbps fiber connection we have some serious spare capacity. VM capable servers with 32GB of ram each can never be wasted!

I asked my boss if I could provision on a couple public IP's some servers - he didn't care as long as I followed best practices for security and if his son could have a server that he wanted if need be :p

Did I mention that I love my job?
Click to expand...
Did I mention I would like a game server as well?
 
Zetro, it looks like there's some demand. Maybe your company can make a bit of $$ on the side by leasing out your unused potential.
 
FrozenLiquidity said:
Zetro, it looks like there's some demand. Maybe your company can make a bit of $$ on the side by leasing out your unused potential.
Click to expand...

That is not quite as easy

On paper its simple, use the space and processing power but once you start dealing with other peoples data and information the security and audit ability of the infrastructure becomes a huge issue. Also SLA support we would not be able to offer a lot as we do not have a generator on our building, no redundant fiber connections, no massive UPS infrastructure, no backup air conditioning etc etc the list goes on. There is a good reason why a hosted data center server is not cheap, everything around it is expensive :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top