Unexploded Ordnance found in Server Room | Hacker News Reader

Unexploded Ordnance found in Server Room

reddit.com

175 pointsempath7548 comments

There are a lot of possibilities here.

1) it was wired to explode, to cover tracks or harm people.

2) It was fired a long time ago, came through a roof/wall and landed behind a server rack and got buried behind cables. the hole in the wall/ceiling tile got patched and there it sat until someone moved the rack.Possibly with numerous people kicking it or seeing it and not thinking a second thought about what it might be.

3) someone came into possession of it and hid it there because it's a secure location with few people who come by. eventually either they forgot about it or they were not in a position to be able to retrieve it.

4) it's inert and he's pulling everyone's leg

I personally think 4 is most likely, followed by 3 and then 2 and then 1.

edit:

one more possibility, it's IS inert but that is undetermined, so the police err on the side of caution and proceed as if it were live.

edit the sequel:

the police don't know about it. I'm fairly certain this is all bullshit now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17119251

Could be (3) for the karma. However, if true why invite the curious eye of a Three Letter Authority who might be interested in Russian ordinance.

That said, the poster said that the IT guy was fired and locked the server room. The only curious part of that tale is that he said the room was locked 2 months ago. I know of no server room with a broken AC unit that can operate that long.

[edit] this is the Czech Rep, that could explain a few things.

According to his update they called the Bomb Squad who reported it was live and they were disposing of it.

I'm on the #4 train, but I don't think he's in on it (though maybe he is.) Some people just collect shells, etc. I don't know where he is, but it seems like it's a Russian round. I can't vouch for why it would be in the server room, but it could just be someone's collectible and they are playing a prank or it was on a shelf and it fell. The "server room" looks very small and he says it's only a 10 person business.

Edit: he now says it's live munitions, but I feel like there would be new articles to confirm this later.

As of 25 mins ago[1] it's an active bomb and there appears to be an active military lockdown.

I laughed pretty hard at the comment asking about his offsite backup strategy.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/8kzx5p/som...

Right to be forgotten or secure erasure measures?

Just re-hashing passwords, with a more secure algorithm implemented in an HSM.

More like an HEM.

(high explosive module)

GDPR taken to another level.

This comment made my day! We just finished our GDPR audit last week!

Did you find any unexploded ordinance?

Rigorous hardware-based security measures.

I'm surprised how little skepticism there is about posts like these. A month earlier the user posted a comment about a mortar round in the same group, and posted a video about a security prank. Not saying it's fake, but it's far from obviously true.

It's reddit. There's a very good chance most of the content on the entire site is staged, because fake internet points mean something to some people.

They’re internet points but they’re not fake. Bitcoin also means a lot to many people :)

You can exchange btc for currency though... Reddit karma can only be bought and accumulated.

And then the account can be sold. Or you can post for money if you’re more interested in renting.

Selling farmed accounts isn't lucrative. You can buy an account with 10K thread karma and 50K comment karma for $50-100.

True, one is more useful than the other but neither of them is fake was my point

I've been following /r/whatisthisthing for several years now (highly recommended, btw) and it is exceptionally rare for people to post fake/staged questions for karma points there. This is reddit indeed, but subs vary quite a bit in how the function.

Especially since there are no other pictures, news reports, or witnesses to what would be a huge spectacle.

I believe this is probably a deacitvated missle someone had as a curio (I see similar stuff used as door stops in military surplus stores). OP then decided it would be funny to stick it in a bundle of wires and tell people he found it.

Also agree. Until I see news coverage I am also very skeptical. People go to great lengths to lie and deceive on the internet.

The czech police apparently doesn't know about it

https://www.lupa.cz/aktuality/na-redditu-se-resi-udajna-bomb...

I definitely believe he's just pranking everyone now. here's a translation:

On one thread on Reddit, an interesting thing is being discussed today. The user, with the nickname WhySoSadCZ, posted a photo of where an old bomb lies between the server racks on the ground. It is supposed to be a location in the Czech Republic, specifically in a server room in offices of unnamed smaller companies.

"No one has been in the server since the last person left IT two months ago and apparently took his keys," WhySoSadCZ writes that he was going to repair the air conditioning in the room and had to get in without the keys.

The user further writes that the business owner has no idea how the bomb took place there. He also states that the building has been evacuated and that the police have been involved here.

Police Spokesperson of the Czech Presidency of the Czech Republic, Jozef Bocan, however, told Lupu that the police did not carry out such an action. "We do not know anything about this description at this moment," he said.

how do i know if this site is more legit that reddit :)

I'm in the central US, so I've never come across something this large... but I have been present a few times when people have found explosives while going through a deceased person's belongings. A couple of those were (very old) commercial explosives, but in one instance it was a few live Vietnam-era M-61 hand grenades. In that particular case they didn't even call the police - they'd already found the paperwork for them; they were legal and registered, though stored improperly.

Holy crap. That takes 'leaving a bomb behind' to a whole new level. I'd bet there is a 'bad leaver' in the recent past.

Worst I've ever found in a server room was a server that shouldn't have been there.

It's close to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M14_Malyutka

Just after the wall fell there was a market in Krosno in South Eastern Poland, you could buy anything Soviet made there including tanks if you wanted to. Makes you wonder when this thing stopped being tracked as a military asset and what the story is of how it ended up in that server room.

In my day, we just hardcoded our credentials in some shell scripts.

You assume Soviet arms were /ever/ tracked, military assets or not. The Soviet military has a long history of misplacing weaponry...

That's an interesting possibility that I had not considered. I always think of the military as a giant exercise in logistics and there is no such thing without asset tracking.

After all, whether you're talking about bullets or aircraft carriers they're not much use to the state that owns them if the state doesn't know where they are.

But if there is enough stuff and a portion of it is misplaced then that would be a real problem. The simple fact that this thing is on display in its present location is worrisome. You could have put it in the back of a car and transported it halfway across Europe to fire it at the base of the Eiffeltower or something stupid like that before anybody would have known it was even there.

The US isn't really much better, especially when in conflict. It's not like infantry are required to write a report every time they use a grenade when involved in active conflict. The hard part would be shipping it back to the US without detection.

There's a 3.8 MT nuclear bomb somewhere just off the coast of Georgia. It's been there since the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll...

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/8kzx5p/som... seems to have some running updates of what's happening, which is below a stickied post.

That's a Sagger ATGM. For when you really want to make sure that your packets get through the firewall.

I don't think that's what the client had in mind when they asked for a penetration test XD

"20mm round unsuccessful in penetrating concrete server building. Will repeat test with 150mm round."

"thread for following an unverified reddit thread on something supposedly developing in real time" seems like a really bad fit for HN.

Last attempt to get them to switch to cloud.

Good thing that the OP exercised good logical thinking about the bomb. It’s great that no one got hurt .

That most of the time would be the IT guy who just finished a large burrito, max spicyness

Shouldn't the word be "ordnance?"

According to The Free Dictionary, "ordnance" is a syncopated version of "ordinance".

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/ordnance

Also: https://www.etymonline.com/word/ordnance

"Ordnance" seems to be the more conventional spelling for this meaning, but I'm not sure that makes it uniquely correct. Linguistics isn't an exact science.

Some of it is [0].

This fact is ever more important in the age of AI.

[0] http://www.helsinki.fi/esslli/courses/readers/K54.pdf

> Please do not circulate, quote, or cite without express permission from the author

Not any more. :) They were variant spellings way back in Middle English (roughly Norman conquest to 1500) when they split off from the French root.

Ordnance now means of military, guns and armaments (cf Ordnance Survey)

Ordinance means an order or religious rite (and apparently bylaw in the US)

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ordinance

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ordnance

I've never felt the need to run "git blame" fast enough

I find it hard to believe that they set-up the racks and everything without anyone taking notice of a freaking mortar shell lying dormant on the floor.

wire-guided anti-tank missile, actually. It seems to be missing its steering fins so it probably has been fired before. As to whether it landed in the server room after a botched shot or was transported there remains to be seen.

Extreme disposal measures for subpoenaed classified emails on mom and pop email server?

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