Military Intelligence (you know what they say!)

I work as a network technician for the US Army. Sometimes, we have some interesting conversations with users when they want to argue with us about troubleshooting. This was a conversation between one of my co-workers and one of our more… Special users….

LT- “Chief, there’s a BIG system issue that won’t allow people to login to the ****NET and after three tries they are locked out.  Can you fix this?”

Chief- “Does the error say wrong username and password?”

Lt- “Yes.”

Chief- “The issue is the users are typing their passwords incorrectly, it’s not a system issue.  Once they do it wrong three times, they are locked out.”

Lt- “But it’s happened to several people, it’s a ****NET issue.”

Chief- “No, it’s a USER issue.  We might need to make the default password easier for some of the ‘special’ users.”

LT- “But it happened to me, too.”

Chief- “… your new password is Password123.  Try now.”

  • Nelson

    Not sure why the writer felt it necessary to censor “SIPRNet”, its existence is not classified.

    Anyway, I’ve also had this happen during my time as a Tactical Systems Engineer in the U.S. Marine Corps. People really are this dumb, and they are allowed to use our classified internet. Terrifying.

    • http://www.facebook.com/daniel.rollins2 Daniel Rollins

      I was wondering that myself….former Network Tech USAF. Now I work for a school system in Texas as a Network Administrator….imagine those stories….

    • http://www.facebook.com/PanTheAllFather Pan Phage

      Actually, the network being sensored isnt SIPRnet. When i wrote it out, I had already sensored the network being used, by calling it BLUEnet. Whomever actually approved it changed it to ****. I do like the title that was chosen however.

    • http://www.facebook.com/PanTheAllFather Pan Phage

      Actually, the network being censored is not SIPR. When I wrote this submission out, I was censoring a completely different network. However, I do like the title chosen by the person who accepted the submission. I had originally chosen “Special Users”

      • Nelson

        Thanks for the clarification. I’ve read some SIPRNet stories before where the writer did this so I made an assumption. Apologies, and thanks for the funny story. Our users can invoke facepalms not matter WHAT network they use, it seems.

  • Capitalics

    “Password123 with a capital [P]? Capital numbers, too?”

    • http://www.facebook.com/PanTheAllFather Pan Phage

      No sir, the numbers are lower case ;)

  • anonymous

    Half of the users in the Army barely know how to use a computer. I hate when our users ask questions like that.

  • holpar

    OMG I am not looking forward to supporting ****net at least some are going to token login, I work service desk for the Air Force. All I can think is your password is 1 2 3 4 5. That is what some idiot with have on their luggage.