My mother was an only child and my dad had a younger sister almost exactly my mom’s age. As I grew up the two women seemed to have a terrific relationship. However, …

When my mother’s mother passed away, she inherited the entire estate, including a set of blue vases. These were displayed on the mantle in our living room.

A few months after the funeral we had some extended family over including my aunt who admired the vases and let it be known. The conversation went like this:

Aunt: “You know, <mom’s name>, those are beautiful vases.”

Mom: “Mm hmm.”

Aunt: “You know that blue is my favorite color and those would look great in my living room.”

Mom: “I’m sure they would.”

Aunt: “Don’t you think your mother would have wanted me to have them?”

Mom (not missing a beat): “Probably, but she’s dead now and can’t do anything about it.”

The look on my aunt’s face was priceless, and the subject was dropped.

I’m the OP from this unnamed wedding story -> https://notalwaysright.com/119193-2/119193/

[It’s nearly a year and a half later, and two more friends are getting married in a beautiful location, though they opted for a hotel on a scenic hillside instead of in the middle of a forest. The reception was in a secret marquee garden behind the hotel.]
[I don’t drink alcohol and the artificial sweetener in various diet sodas (and now several regular sodas) still cause me major issues. While they do give me mild stomach aches, those are now overwhelmed by blinding migraines and nausea.]
Me: [approaching the bar] Hey do you guys serve [regular soda]?
Server: Sure. Small or large?
Me: Large please.
[They pour it and I happily take it back to the table but I soon realise something is up.]
Friend: What’s wrong?
Me: [sour-faced] I could be wrong but this tastes like [diet soda]
Friend: Let me try it. [tries it] No that is definitely [diet soda]. Go ask them to replace it.
[So I head back over to the bar, there’s three servers and what I presume is a manager gossiping to one side as most people have taken their seats]
Me: Hey, sorry I think there was a mistake. I asked for [regular soda] but this is [diet soda]
Server: That IS [diet soda]
Me: …..I asked for [regular soda]
Server: We don’t serve [regular soda]
[I’ve encountered this at some (though not many) other bars before, where for some dumb reason they have withdrawn [regular soda] completely, and only offer [diet soda].]
[Behind the server, the Manager moves to the till on the back bar and starts a refund]
Me: [now pretty ticked] I can’t have [diet soda]. It makes me sick.
Manager: [having finished] Here’s your money back. [to server] Give them a replacement. No charge.
[Turns out all their dispensable sodas had artificial sweetners and my other drink options were expensive branded sparkling apple juice and water. I did wind up with a migraine, though less so, because after last time I had the sense to bring my medication with me.]

One of the features of working with semi-automated computer systems is the rise of the “machine ID” a full directory entry, complete with email address for the automated process in question. If you dig into the directory record you can figure out which human owns the ID.

There are also automatically generated email distribution lists. So if you work for department XYZ, you can send an email to Department_XYZ_mail and it will reach everyone in the department. When your department changes in the company directory, the automated process moves your ID to the new list.

One day everyone in the division (thousands of people) got a strange email that looked like it came from a machine ID. As the info wasn’t relevant to any of us, several people replied to the ID asking to be removed from the list. This is the normal procedure: don’t hit reply all, just reply to the machine ID and get removed from the process distribution list. Problem was, it WASN’T a machine ID, it was a distribution list for a high level position in the org chart, so that everyone in the down line of that position got the email, and all the responses asking to be removed. In essence replying to the sender only was the equivalent of reply all.

This lead to the inevitable sequence of people hitting reply all to the removal requests asking that people not use reply all. Inboxes were quickly flooded and all real communication was lost in the noise. A few of us generated mail filters to dump everything from that sender to a spam folder and turned off our new mail notifications, but the servers themselves were overwhelmed so legitimate communication was often quite delayed.

Then the investigation began as we tried to figure out who owned the offending system and why it was using a distribution list instead of a machine ID to send out the initial message. Digging through the directory we found a conundrum: the distribution list belonged to an executive that was no longer with the company (which should have automatically disabled it), and it’s ownership had defaulted to a machine ID. The machine ID in question, owned by the missing executive, was assigned to the distribution list as the owner. Someone had gotten creative with assigning roles and backups, and the failover when the top of the pyramid left didn’t work as a result. There was no longer an assigned human in charge of any of this!

It took nearly half a day for someone in IT with sufficient access to disable the rogue distribution list. When I went to empty my spam folder, there were over 3000 messages from the chain.

All that because someone somewhere didn’t want to be bothered with properly managing IDs and assigned a machine to monitor the machines.

TTLE: How I took down mega-company’s e-mail with a single “rule”.

Some years ago, the company I worked for provided a computer systems to many customers, including [mega multinational. We also provided support and maintenance for these systems. In order to do this we needed access to the systems. [mega multinational] were very security conscious, our system was inside their company intranet, no access from the external Internet. We did not want to have to travel to the site every time we received a support call, so the company provided us with laptops which connected via a VPN into their internal network from outside, exactly like one of their employees working from home. These laptops were locked down tighter than a [choose your crudity]. No admin access, no installation of extra programs allowed, could not connect to my own employers network. So I now had 2 laptops on my desk.

With this laptop came an account on [mega multinational]’s domain, a [mega multinational] e-mail address etc. This had the disadvantage that when one of [mega multinational]’s employees wished to send me an e-mail, they entered my name in their e-mail and it defaulted to my [mega multinational] e-mail address, not [my company]’s one. I got phone calls complaining I had not responded to urgent e-mails. I now had to start up my [mega multinational] laptop and check e-mails twice a day, just in case somebody from this one customer had sent me one, a PIA.

Solution: In [mega multinational]’s e-mail client, set a “forward all” rule to [my company]. It worked. Saved remembering to check twice a day.

All went well for a few weeks. Then I came into work one Monday. Phone calls, [mega multinational]’s whole e-mail was down due to overloading and they were blaming us, claiming we were sending them thousands of e-mails.
It appeared that on Saturday [my company]’s e-mail provider had screwed up. All incoming e-mails were being returned to sender “domain not known”. A problem for my bosses to sort out.
The [mega multinational] e-mail address was also used to send daily status reports automatically. Sunday’s report was sent to [my company]. Return to sender “Domain invalid”. The rule I set up in [mega multinational] e-mail was forwarding it to [my company], return to sender ([mega multinational]) “Domain invalid”. Rinse and repeat many times per second. [mega multinational] e-mail overloaded and crashed. Worldwide.

Quickly log in to [mega multinational] and nuke the “rule”. Then wait a few hours for the backlog of thousands of e-mails to clear.
[my company] was told off, but in reality [mega multinational]’s e-mail should not have been that vulnerable. Back to checking my second laptop for e-mails twice a day.

And that is how I single-handedly broke a multinational company’s e-mail with one forwarding rule.

I get back to my desk to see one of the younger guys sitting in my chair, he seems to be talking the ear off one of the older guys who sits next to me.
As I get nearer I can hear that he is going on about protein supplement, not a surprise as the guy seems to live and breath for the gym. It seems to be his one personality trait.

Young guy: so that’s why I use (protein brand). Its far better. Do you use protein?

Coworker: (obviously just being polite) i can get my protein from natural sources.

Young guy: oh, you should try out (protein brand) it is great if you want to hit the gym.

(I exchange glances with my coworker, you wouldn’t think it, but he is in great shape. )

Me: hey (coworker) how many Olympic medals do you have for weight lifting?

Coworker: oh, four. No wait, five. I won one last year. But it was only a silver.

(Young guy’s face is a picture, I turn to him.)

Me: yeah, I think he knows all he needs to about protein. Maybe he could teach you a thing or two.

Young guy: oh I’m sorry I had no idea.

(He scurries off in embarrassment we share a laugh about the young guy trying to get an olympiad into the gym.)