a phishmus carol

🎄 chapter three – the ghost of phishmus past

He woke with a start, it was a smell that woke him. It wasn’t the sprouts, he was sure of that.

In the corner, sat on his chair, the one where he usually threw his clothes before bed, was a man. A jolly fellow, eating something from a bucket. Ugh… the eleven secret herbs and spices. What was the obsession with that fried chicken?

“Who are you? What do you want?” asked Scrooge.

“I am the Ghost of Phishmas Past, I am here to remind you from where you came”.

“What? Get out of my house… you can’t come in here…” replied Scrooge.

A gust of wind blew open the window and the big guy grabbed Scrooge and out the window the flew!

Let’s not spend too much time dwelling on this… you’re busy, I’m busy, I need to get to the point.

The pair took a whirlwind tour of Scrooge’s past. They saw his early childhood, filled with love and care. He received fantastic gifts from Father Christmas in his early years, but then something changed, by the age of six, the gifts had turned cheap and few.

He never felt anything but love and care from his family, yet his childhood was one spent with so little of material worth. Whilst his friends had plenty, his belongings were often second hand or anything that could be sourced from the Middle-of-Lidl.

What had happened? What had changed?

Next, he saw a conversation between his parents. They were crying, it was Christmas Eve, when Scrooge was twelve years old. He remembered that year well, he’d asked for a Sega Megadrive, but instead he’d received a Master System.

All of his friends got the Mega Drive or a SNES, why was he given the previous gen console? WHHYYYY????

He heard his father complain… “if only I’d paid more attention, if only I’d noticed it was a scam… then we could give our son everything, but now each day is a struggle as we still have to pay off our debts”.

And then, Scrooge was back in his bed. There was a knock on the door… for heaven’s sake… now what?

🎄 chapter four – the ghost of phishmus present

YScrooge opened the door where he met a strange looking lady, dressed in a sparkly outfit, a dress made of gold and white sequins. But he couldn’t quite decide if the dress was white and gold or if it was blue and black.

“I’m the ghost of Phishmas Present” she said. “But there will be no presents here”.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“We need to go… there’s much for you to learn” she said, dismissively.

They stepped out of the door and climbed into an electric car that was waiting outside… Scrooge had promised himself he’d never ride in an electric car, it deprived him of his masculinity. Only simps drove electric cars he told himself.

As they drove, they passed through the streets of his local town and headed towards his office.

At the office, Rob Catchit was busy working. He was studying his messages in Outlook. Hovering the mouse over an email.

He seemed troubled, but then said to himself “CLICK THE DAMNED LINK AND GET ON WITH IT” – and so he did.

Scrooge watched as Rob’s Safari browser opened up. Scrooge loved Safari, it came with those shiny Apple Mac’s he’d bought. Who wouldn’t want to work with a company so successful that they could buy Apple for the whole team, right?

Rob was met with a Microsoft 365 login screen. He paused and then entered his username and password.

An error message appeared and Rob sat back, wondering what to do next.

He’d email the client and find out what’s was going on in a bit. He didn’t want to get into trouble with the boss, missing out on that RFQ would be a big loss, and he really needed to meet his sales targets this month.

Within an hour, Rob’s phone was ringing… it was the client who had send the RFQ.

“Uhuh? Right… oh no… and… yes, I already did… I clicked on the link…. Yes, I put in my username and password… oh shit… right… OK, thanks for letting me know. I’ll get onto it”.

Scrooge could see that Rob had turned pale. What had happened?

Rob frantically clicked on his Outlook, went to the Sent Items folder and there he could see, message after message, all with the same subject line… “URGENT: RFQ Response needed – Act now!”.

Rob had not sent these messages and it looks like they’d gone out to everyone he’d ever emailed!

In a panic, Rob closed down the screen of his MacBook, disconnected it from the power supply and sighed with relief, would that have stopped any more messages from being sent?

🎄 chapter five – the ghost of phishmuses yet to come

Scrooge was mildly concerned, but was still thinking about that holiday. He’d wondered if he might even be able to upgrade his company car, when suddenly a mist appeared before him. Something befitting of his status as a Company Director no less.

The misty fog grew darker and darker, turning into a thick smoke and then the smoke formed into a shape, a shape of a man, in a suit, wearing a badge marked ICO.

What is this ICO? There were no immigrants to round up here! Oh, wait, that’s ICE…

“I am the ghost of phishmasses yet to come” announced the man. “I have come from the Information Commissioners Office, to show you the future that you face”.

As the man spoke, Scrooge was filled with an inexplicable feeling of dread and doubt.

He brushed it off and said to himself “Right… let’s get this over with!” and off they went, one last time, into the night.

The world was dark and foreboding, with heavy clouds and all that, you know… maybe a hint of lightening. Shadows… it was spooky….

This ICO fella took Scrooge to a familiar place, though it was cold and dark. The windows boarded up. Signs of past activity from long ago remaining, a desk here, a phone there, some files, a chair… a coffee cup, with dried coffee stains inside.

Wait… this was his office! How could it be? Closed down, seemingly without any care. Where did everyone go?

He spotted a note on the desk, it had been printed off some time ago, the corners curling now… it read “Notice of business closure”.

He read on, it spoke of a cyber attack, it started with a phishing link… a compromised account, hackers got in, they emailed hundreds of clients, they in turn got attacked and held the company to blame.

Shortly after, data was leaked and ransomware locked up the systems and nobody could access any work.

There was no IT expertise available to fix the problem and it spiralled out of control, all within a matter of hours, years of work gone!

They couldn’t even restore from backups, they hadn’t made any!

Passwords had been reused across different websites, accounts shared with co-workers past and present (or past and past at this point!), antivirus? That’s not for Mac users, right?

Clients left, to work with competitors with better systems and security and then came the legal action against them, as if they hadn’t been punished enough!

Eventually, new business dried up, team members had to be let go and the debts mounted.

The business had no cyber insurance, not that it would have paid out, the insurance needs you to have security measures in place.

Suddenly Scrooge cried out… “Nnnooooooooooo! Mmmnghph.. Seychelles….” – as he woke up suddenly with his phone charger cable wrapped around his wrist.

🎄 chapter six – redemption

After he gave his head a wobble, Scrooge looked around the room, patted himself down and glanced out of the window.

Outside, the weather was sunny and people were busy, going about their business as normal.

He sorted himself out, had a shower, a shit and a shave and got ready to head to the office.

His head was filled with ideas, he was excited to make positive changes within his business. Yet he remembered the RFQ email from yesterday which made his eyeballs twitch, he felt a touch of panic and a sense of urgency to get it sorted out.

When he arrived at the office, poor Rob was sat there looking worse for wear, had he been there all night?

Rob explained what had happened, he’d not turned his laptop on since.

Scrooge rushed to his desk and picked up the stack of business cards from his drawer, in the middle of that pile was a business card of an IT business owner that he’d met several times at his weekly business networking group.

This bloke had told stories on a weekly basis, Scrooge had ignored or dismissed them as scaremongering, but now he knew differently.

After a few more hours passed, the IT company had sprung into action, connecting to Scrooge’s systems and checked out the sign-in logs, email logs and audit logs, helping them to work out exactly what had and hadn’t been touched by the hackers.

Scrooge was lucky, it could have been so much worse, fortunately they’d only used the system to send more phishing messages. Embarrassing, yes, but catastrophic? Luckily, no…

After spending the day of contacting clients and prospects to explain what had happened and warn them to delete the messages, Scrooge was ready to take the damned hint. It was time to invest in his business IT, for his clients, for his staff and for himself. Hooray!

He signed up for an IT support contract with enhanced cyber security and entrusted the business tech to his worthy new partner.

They didn’t just take care of creating new email addresses and setting up computers, they also managed the security, kept the business safe and booked quarterly service reviews to help Scrooge develop the business and make it truly fly.

Scrooge had never felt so free, he was happier than he’d been for years, he even smiled a few times which helped him get a girlfriend, bless this IT company, for they fixed more than his business, they fixed his heart too! 🤣🤣🤣🤣