Hmm... Perhaps That Wasn't a Good Idea After All

It seems that either the IT department is on to me, or the new changes in server settings that were described in an email sent to everyone at then end of yesterday have changed the access-by-IP address capablities of the network available to employees, as this morning, I was unable to ping any IP addresses in the command line, nor was I able to access the company's main website (though the intranet access remained fine). I sincerely hope it's the latter, as if it's the former, it means the company is monitoring everything down to SSHs, in which case, there *really* is no privacy here. Not sure exactly how much a packet sniffer can see in terms of packets leaving by SSH - but I assume there's at least a little reason why they call it Secure SHell. I guess that would depend on the monitoring tools they're using. So far, the most detailed sniffer I've used is Ethereal, which, I believe, is capable of telling you who's looking at p0rn on your network. Somehow, though, ASCII porn just doesn't seem to hold that same thrill, so I imagine they probably don't have much trouble with folks abusing Telnet services to look at stuff that looks like

oo===>(_!_) --"hoo yeah! right in the ear!"

(As a side note, while we're on the topic of humorous porn: it seems that we've lost a great asset to the joke porno community, as www.savagesonblondes.com now directly links to www.blacksonblondes.com - a fairly boring, run-of-the-mill pornography site. Those of you who remember savagesonblondes.com will recall that the original website featured a back story of the Jumungousdong tribe and the witch doctor who sent them on a quest to America in search of women, along with many quailty photoshopped pictures, including the famous "show us your savage face!" Of course, all the actual pornography footage was stolen from blacksonblondes.com, but that's beside the point. And now back to your regularly scheduled Plague).

Of course, SSH or not, it wouldn't matter if the company's installed a keylogger on each computer, in which case, well, what can I say? "Damn, I didn't think of that?" "You really got me pinned there? I hope you don't mind that I typed the phrase 'rude IT guys?'" Still, a keylogger for each computer seems like a true waste of resources - how closely do you want to monitor your employees anyways? While it's a good idea to monitor email and web browser usage to ensure that employees aren't Yahoo-ing on company time, how much recreational SSH-ing does a person do?!
At the very least, if the good folks here do come to skin my ass, to my defense, the sole reason I SSH-ed out was to be able to do research on how to build a low-impedence signal generator, and to get some linear algebra tips. Let's face it, the company only has so much information on their own intranet pages, and more often than not, it's not the right kind of design information. While I did answer a few zephyrs whilst logged in, I can definitely say that my reasons for gaining text-based web access were 100% business-related. Hell, if some guy can leave a web browser open to a page containing an online family photo album on the "public internet workstation," I think I'm allowed to text-google "quartz crystal oscillator signal generator" and look up a few of my old 6.115 lab writeups. And really, who wants to be the asshole who hogs the only internet-ready workstation on the floor for an hour looking up information on how to build a pulse generator from scratch?
At best, they didn't even notice, given the sackloads of other computers they need to manage. However, since I've taken a break from poking around the system for a while, maybe they won't think twice about checking anymore, or if they ask, I'll say "I needed it to access the S.O.S. (which I will cleverly make out to be Secure Offsite Server, instead of Same Ol' Shit)."
I suppose my next trick will involve dialing into the public internet workstation and attempting to use that as a gateway, but I think that's going to involve a lot more monkeying around than can be done without research. Ah well, more to come, I'm sure.
In other news, I had a really terrible lunch today. I suppose there's a reason the "veggie stuffed potato" was a dollar cheaper than everything else. Augghhh... thing was denser than a rock, full of really gross cauliflower, broccoli, squash and celery. Man... I'm not looking forward to shitting bricks tomorrow morning.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

P.S. On a completely different note, "Where is everybody?!" I haven't gotten any email in days!