Security News > 2021 > November > A tiny typo in an automated email to thousands of customers turns out to be a big problem for legal

Our tale, from a reader Regomised as "Ali", takes place nearly 20 years ago, when he was in his first job in IT. His career, in a manner familiar to many, began on the helpdesk.

Ali's helpdesk tickets up until this point had mainly consisted of users not knowing how to use the service: "Like how do I get my email, why can't I edit my site, what do you mean I need to own a computer to work on a website - I just bought a modem!".

Unlike those bots, Ali also built in some human interaction so he could check what was being sent before it actually went out.

With the sheer volume of cases being generated by the SQL Slammer worm, Ali decided to go full-auto.

Rather than 'MSSQL', Ali managed to point the finger of blame at a well-known open-source relational database management system.

The next evening, when Ali started his helpdesk shift, he was called into a meeting with all the company cheeses, from big to grand.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/11/22/who_me/