On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 05:08:00PM -0500, Steve Sobol wrote:
> It makes more sense if you know the context in which
> Chris Neill was fired. I do, but I really don't feel at liberty
> to describe the situation without his permission.

Christ, anyone on rbl-discuss knows pretty well. I got into a flamewar with
Dean Anderson and after I told Dean I wasnt interested in arguing with him
anymore he had to have the last word and contacted Verio legal claiming that
I was attempting to extort money from him (I was, in fact, not).

Bob Leptich flew out to suspend me. He gathered a statement from me and
claimed that there would be a follow up and I offered to send him copies
of the thread with Anderson. No one from Verio ever followed up on my
statement or asked to getthe relevant posts between Anderson and I.

The discussion was not directly related to Verio and most of the time I
did not post to RBL from a company email address. It was, however, known
that I was in the employ of Verio at the time. My firing was the result
of Dean Anderson's vindictive nature and Verio's complacency towards their
cattle^Wemployees and their irrational PR policies. I was fired because
Verio was concerned about a legal proceeding tarnishing their image --
ironic due to their lackluster stance on SPAM (if this has changed, Ihave
not seen evidence of it -- if anything, Verio was terrified to do anything
about spam because they not only feared loss of revenue before their EBITDA
started turning to gold later in 1999, they also feared legal action from
spammers, a predicament Ravi and I were trying to alleviate by toughening
their AUP).

I was accused to hacking verio, verio's backbone, Dean. FBI agents interviewed
my former coworkers then threatened many of them to keep it quiet. Recently
the same agency has investigated me for alleged software piracy (this confuses
me greatly -- I despise warez, warez k1dz, and the whole scene). I feel
Anderson is behind this latest investigation. I suspect Verio management
called the FBI on me for the alleged hacking (they /were/ hacked, along with
my friend's personal machines, including one person's laptop, and I know
who by, however, we never reported or folloed up because the FBI has been
unable to catch these rascals for over 10 years and retribution would have
been very, very unpleasant). As a matter of fact, although Verio management
has no idea, it is well known by several current and former employees that
in fact had I not stepped in to help after they were compromised, the
QualNet backbone would be up shit creek. Concurrent to that series of attacks,
WWA.net (Verio Chicago) was thoroughly rooted by persons unknown to me. It
is possible that Verio thought I was perhaps behind those attacks. Regardless
of my feelings toward Verio management, I in fact put in many unpaid hours
working with engineers in Cleveland to clean up the mess on their systems.
I was told by one of my friends in the NOC that he would never understand
my work ethic.

I guess that's why I got my extra-mile mug on the day the Tom Campbell fired
me. In hindsight, I should have pooped in it and left it in the fridge
with a post-it note saying "Chris Neill's, DONT TOUCH!!" as a friend of mine
suggested.

I have a hard time believing this paradigm-shift that people are claiming
about Verio. I do know for a fact that they have not learned their lesson
about security as it is rumored, and I substantially believe the rumors,
that most of Verio's backbone and crucial systems are very strongly owned.
I hope they aren't keeping credit cards on line, but even if its behind
a firewall I know the people involved have enough skill to access even
that trivially. I recommend that anyone who does business with Verio do
cash transactions if they aren't keen on having a fraudulent credit card
bill.