Willemstan - IT Men Skirmishes
This article was last updated on: September 11th of 2022
A Willemstan propaganda of Jeff Cassin, the top IT Man of Williamston Community Schools.
"The IT Men typically triumph, except usually they fight the wrong war."
- Charlie Nolan on past incidents, 01/26/21.
"I was just doing my job man."
- Zaharren Wilhelm on Willemstan's conflict with the IT Men.
Lore
From 2018 - 2021, Charlie Nolan, Ian Hampton, and Sean Kavanagh committed countless acts against the computers of Williamston Community Schools. These acts ranged from little things such as fucking with the color settings of a monitor, all the way to planting viruses that have incapacitated over a dozen school computers. Many of their actions have naturally attracted the attention of the IT Men, who often kick their asses in response. However, the school administration, whether it be under Mr. Freeman or Mr. Armour, has never had the full picture of each event. As a result, Charlie, Ian, and Sean have always been given minimal consequences for their actions, only to do something stupid again later. Before the infamous acts of those three, Charlie pioneered the spread of the "disk drive virus", which was planted on countless school computers at WMS and WHS. James Doyen was once quoted saying the actions of Charlie, Ian, and Sean have been "a waste of my time".
Interestingly, not every act by the System Trio resulted in IT action, even if the administration was pissed off. Most notably, during the March Incident, the IT Men were not informed about what had been taking place in the robotics room, even though it involved the school network and school technology to an extent. Really, it is the administration's job to make sure students aren't messing with school computers and to prosecute them if they are being stupid. It is also worth noting that most of the computer incidents in this article took place before the "Great Leap Forward", in which the district greatly improved their security by getting off the piece of shit that is Novell Networks, and by implementing a certain level of web search tracking on the desktop computers. It will be much harder for future students to commit the same level of computer crimes as we had.
Act One: First Attack on D1
Outcome: IT Men Victory
Main article: Damage to School Computers
In the early months of the 2018-2019 school year, Charlie and Sean changed the color and aspect ratio settings of two computer monitors. This was accomplished using the intel graphics control panel, and made the computers look really ugly. Sra. Ide reported this activity to the IT Men, who then forced Charlie and Sean to reverse the "damage". Sra. Ide claimed the IT Men could not figure out how to undo the changes, but it is more likely that they just wanted Charlie and Sean to reverse the damage themselves to prove a point. This method of "damaging" school computers, which could easily be reversed with a single button in the control panel, would continue to be used in 2018 and early 2019. A video of Charlie and Sean in the D1 computer lab with the computers was released in the Silly School for Cosmic Children (Google Classroom).
Act Two: System Saga & Consume Saga
Outcome: IT Men Victory
Main article: System I
Soon after the events of the first act, Charlie founded a folder called "System" to store stupid programs and homebrewed viruses on the HS Student Shared. He soon invited Sean and Ian to contribute to the folder, and so the three of them steadily added to it over time. The folder was named "System" to avoid suspicion, but after other students of WHS found the folder, they opted to hide the folder entirely, using a shortcut to access it. However, this was not foolproof, as many school computers had their permissions improperly set up or tampered with, allowing those computers to see hidden folders.
It was during this act that the most significant research on school computers was completed. By the time February of 2019 rolled around, the trio had figured out how to access the group policy editor and security console to undo the vast majority of the restrictions set up by the IT Men. They also learned how to tamper with more of the graphical settings of the school computers, the most notable example of this was the crouton computer in March of 2019. In short, this research phase proved invaluable for Willemstan. However, the most ambitious project began on March 17th of 2019. This project was known as "Consume.bat", and began as a simple batch program designed to fill up hard drive space. However, after several tests, the first version was deemed ineffective, and so a second version of Consume dubbed "Novel_Auth.exe" was created. It was much faster that its predecessor, and could run on start up. It was able to fill up a school computer's hard drive within a school day. The trio began spreading the virus around the computers of the D1 lab and other classrooms, and they watched as the IT Men removed computer after computer from the room to repair it, much to their amusement.
However, when Charlie, Ian, and Sean returned to school after spring break, they were met with a backhanded slap. The System Folder was deleted, and within a couple days they were summoned to the office of Mr. Freeman for trial. Their actions had caught the attention of several teachers and the IT Men, and over spring break the administration had pieced everything together. You see, there was one fatal flaw with the Consume II virus. It had to be planted in the users file, and so the IT Men were able to determine who exactly planted it. Ian and Charlie were hit with a day long suspension, but Sean was let off by Freeman for being a "nice guy". However, a stroke of luck had also graced the trio. The IT Men had only busted them for the inappropriate error message Charlie programmed, and did not link the program to the hard drive filling. As a result, they had gotten off easy due to the oversight of the IT Men. Despite this stroke of luck, the trio was demoralized by the incident and were grounded by their parents. James Doyen, the main IT Man of Williamston High School, was quoted saying the whole incident was "a waste of his time".
Sometime after that, the creators of the now dead System folder began an investigation, reciting their respective court martial to each other and managed to piece together a nearly complete picture of what occurred. Rather than taking the incident as a lesson to stop fucking around, the trio simply learned to be more careful next time. They began the development of System II from an incomplete backup of System I, also located on the HS Student Shared. However, they soon decided it would be best to move their operations off of school computers to avoid getting in trouble again. Charlie began extensive development of the Willemstan File Service, in hopes of turning it into a private sever for Willemstani operations. However, development was taking a long time, and so in the meantime Ian and Sean created System III on Google Drive, and opted to transfer System II there. They then scrubbed System II clean, wiping most of their tracks.
Act Three: Robotics Team Saga
Outcome: Marginal IT Men Victory
Main articles: WHS Robotics Team and System IV
At the start of the 2019-2020 school year, the WHS Robotics Team, a new extracurricular founded in the previous year, received a new room and increased funding. This room was known as D2, it is a huge classroom with a neighboring storage room. Since the robotics team was made up of mostly Willemstan members, it provided the perfect space for Willemstani operations. Charlie decided to scrap the WFS project, and instead set up a new computer known as System IV. This computer quickly turned into a sever, and was intregated with SuS. The files from System III were transfered over, and information about the server was distributed to the Willemstan public. The best part about System IV was that it was running off of a computer entirely owned by Charlie, meaning it was not associated with the school network, and could not be accessed by the IT Men. It was perfect. Charlie, Ian, and Sean quickly contributed to the sever, but soon Charlie unleashed an ambitous project known as SuS Premium, which collected thousands of attachments from Discord by logging into user accounts via the Discord JavaScript API, and transfered those to the System IV server. Within only a few months, System IV had become the most successful and largest System folder.
Later in 2019, Sean and Charlie began using an assortment of old (and 1 abandoned school computer) computers to mine cryptocurrency using school power and internet. They even brought in their own router to use as an ethernet switchbox for the mining to increase ethernet connectivity. While this process was very poor due to the lack of a graphics card, Charlie and Sean could say that they were activly consuming school resources for their own purposes. However, this operation soon attracted unwanted attention.
On November 3rd of 2019, a day which will live in infamy, the IT Men stormed the robotics room in a search and destroy mission. They had become aware of an increased consumption of school internet resources and were determined to find the cause. Upon entering the robotics room, the IT Men disabled all computers in the room, including the laptop used for only robotics purposes. The disconnected the power cord and ethernet cable of each computer, irreparably damaging the ethernet ports of several computers. Several computers were displaced during the incident, the cryptocurrency mine was discovered and terminated. The router was outright confiscated, and the System IV computer was disabled. To top it all off, the IT Men sent an email to Dr. Steven Delp and Cody Reeve, reporting their findings but did not describe the damage they caused.
Charlie and Sean were outraged when they heard of the news. They began an initiative to "collect evidence" against the IT Men. Without the router, the cryptomine was scrapped. Thankfully, the IT Men could not narrow down who exactly was responsible, and so Charlie and Sean got away scratch free. However, Charlie spent the better part of a weekend repairing the System IV server which had a damaged ethernet ports. He attached an antenna and a wireless internet card to the damaged computer to restore connectivity in the case of the ethernet port failing. He also disabled the indicator lights in order to make the computer look like it was always offline, and also added a lock and key. This lock was used to turn the computer on and off, and a second lock was added to open the computer. As a result, the IT Men could not turn the computer on and off using the power button, nor could they actually get into the computer if they wanted to. It was 100% IT Man proof. All the IT Men accomplished this time was take out the mine, which wasn't making much money anyway, and temporarily disabled some computers. At the time, we did not know who was responsible for the raid, but we blamed James Doyen because he was the only IT Man we saw at Williamston High School. In reality, it was probably James and Jeff Cassin.
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Act Four: Minor Incidents
Outcome: Willemstan Victory
April 2020 Shutdown
On April 17th of 2020, the System IV computer went totally offline. Due to the ongoing pandemic and lockdown, Charlie, Ian, and Sean had no choice but to sit at home and hope the computer would magically turn back on again. Which it did not. This resulted in growing unrest and speculation, as they had no idea what resulted in the shutdown. They concluded that the school must have shut off the internet in the building since it was not in use. However, what actually happened was that the IT Men had upgraded the school computers in the room and disconnected the System IV server. Cody attempted to warn Charlie of what was occurring, but Charlie did not receive this message until it was too late.
Consume III
Main article: Damage to School Computers
On July 10th of 2020, Charlie began the development of Consume III. It was "ready for action" by the following day. He would spend the time from July 11th - July 25th upgrading Consume III, which he named "WindowsUpdateBackground.exe". He also developed an antidote for the program and uploaded test videos onto YouTube. This version fills up hard drives even faster, should be 100% hidden, and can place itself in the startup files, allowing it to run on any account and resume operation after the infected computer was shut off. In short, it is unstoppable once activated without the use of the antidote. However, Consume III was only used on a school computer once and that was by accident. This is because we were smart enough to know that deploying Consume III was a stupid idea.
System IV Rescue Operation
Main article: 2020 Rescue Operation
On July 27th of 2020, Charlie, Ian, Sean, and Devin Abood went to Williamston High School to retrieve the System IV computer. The high school had been somewhat open during the summer, and they wanted to retrieve the computer before it shut down again. The four of them drove over to Williamston High School, walked through an open door, and then kindly asked a janitor to let them in the robotics room. Upon entering, they discovered the computer improvements and upgrades. The System IV computer was found resting on the table often seen in the Live Camera Feed streams. The monitor and power cable were on the other side of the classroom. All of the other computers were assimilated into the school network by the IT Men, except for System IV. This was because of the lock and key measures which prevented them from accessing the computer. The group successful extracted the computer from the school and booted it up at Charlie's house, where it remains today. Out of IT Men reach, System IV is accessible worldwide, and there is nothing they can do about it.
Act Five: Post March Incident
Outcome: IT Men Victory
Computer Restrictions
Main article: Non-Academic Activities in WHS Robotics
In the words of Mr. Armour: "We do not trust Charlie and Sean". Following the March Incident, care was taken to make sure the robotics computers were put under the boot of the school network. This included the three robotics laptops (owned by the school), the desktop owned by the school, and the old desktop not owned by the school, which got put under the network anyway. Due to this, the robotics team could not install the software they needed for robotics. Efforts to circumvent these restrictions proved mostly ineffective, though the old desktop could be used to install some software, with some work. Eventually, Cody reached out to the administration, asking for an admin account so members of the team could install the needed software. While this was given, it did not work on the school desktop nor two of the robotics laptop. It only worked on one laptop, and even then, the laptop would randomly reset its hard drive for no reason. Efforts to resolve this issue during the 2021 - 2022 school year never came to fruition because Cody did not want to reach out again. As a result, the robotics team was forced to work under the boot of the school network, in a mess that was effectively their own making.