Twas the night before start-up and all through the net,
not a packet was moving; no bit nor octet.
The engineers rattled their cards in despair,
hoping a bad chip would blow with a flare.
The salesmen were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of data nets danced in their heads.
And I with my datascope tracings and dumps
prepared for some pretty bad bruises and lumps.
When out in the hall there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
There stood at the threshold with PC in tow,
An ARPANET hacker, all ready to go.
I could see from the creases that covered his brow,
he'd conquer the crisis confronting him now.
More rapid than eagles, he checked each alarm
and scrutinized each for its potential harm.
On LAPB, on OSI, X.25!
TCP, SNA, V.35!
His eyes were afire with the strength of his gaze;
no bug could hide long; not for hours or days.
A wink of his eye and a twitch of his head,
soon gave me to know I had little to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
fixing a net that had gone plumb berserk;
And laying a finger on one suspect line,
he entered a patch and the net came up fine!
The packets flowed neatly and protocols matched;
the hosts interfaced and shift-registers latched.
He tested the system from Gateway to PAD;
not one bit was dropped; no checksum was bad.
At last he was finished and wearily sighed
and turned to explain why the system had died.
I twisted my fingers and counted to ten;
an off-by-one index had done it again...
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the LAN
No malware was stirring, not even LoveSan;
The firewalls were racked by the router with care,
In hopes that no hacker soon would be there;
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of emails danced in their heads;
And me with my MacBook, and fresh packet cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out from the pager there arose such a clatter,
I sprang to my desk to see what was the matter.
Away to the browser I flew like a flash,
Came through the VPN and refreshed the cache.
The sign on the certificate gave me to know
The session was safe, so I opened it - Lo!
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature email, and in text that was clear,
With a new device driver, with a quick "ho ho ho",
I knew in a moment it was our CSO.
More rapid than eagles his memos they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, firewall! now, filter! now, intrusion detection!
On, event correlation! deep packet inspection!
Build layered defense! to the top of the wall!
Now block away! block away! block away all!"
As alarms that before the wild network worm fly,
When they meet with my console, mount up to the sky,
So up to the network the sensors they flew,
With the rack full of gear, and the CSO too.
And then, with a twinkling, I heard on my cell
The custom ring-tone - the network was well.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down to my inbox he came with a bound.
His message was brief, what was afoot?
Were servers and systems safe at the root?
A bundle of appliances stacked on his rack,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
Their lights -- how they twinkled! Their vendors - how merry!
They stopped all attacks, they paged my BlackBerry!
The poor little hackers were drawn up like a bow,
And tied up in knots in the honeypot below;
The stump of net packets held tight in our teeth,
With logs all analyzed, traceroutes were a breeze;
Our policies sound, vulnerabilities patched,
Our security systems just could not be matched.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his audit,
tested the firewalls; then turned to report it,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up our T3 he rose;
He sprang to his limo, gave his consultants a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!"
