I just had the enjoyment of performing an autopsy on our backup server, arguably the most important machine on the network, responsible for the retreival and archiving of the filesystems from all the other servers.
As I opened the case it was immediately obvious what had happened, an intruder had broken in and hacked the machine physically. No, not a burgular, nor a government agent but a mouse.
It would appear that most of the hardware has been rendered usless, one harddrive is in a very bad state, the motherboard has urine and other such waste all over it (and in several places capacitors look like they’ve been shorted), the PCI slots are blocked up and the network card appears fried. Fortunately the CPU untouched, as does the RAM, PSU and other two HDs.
The reason I’m blogging this not for the comedy’s sake (at present I find this quite far from halarious, but that may change in the future) but to act as a warning to all those who’re reading this and are administrators to their own networks. Make sure, please, that your computers don’t have PCI slots without blanking plates in them, that no CD drive bays are empty and open and that the case remains securly on at all times. I can only assume that this mouse got in through one of the two open PCI/ISA slots in the case, as there was no other holes large enough. Don’t under estimate the common mouse.