BOFH: Arrr, I smell piracy ... and it's comin' from a machine with executive privileges

Hang on, can't we just turn off the internet?

Simon Travaglia Simon Travaglia

Published fri 24 Apr 2026 // 11:00 UTC

EPISODE 8 "Well that's serious!" I say to the Boss, once he's finished reporting the serious breach of IT policy.

"Yes, I thought I should pass it onto you when I heard about it."

"Oh yes," the PFY nods, "We need to keep on top of this sort of thing before it gets out of hand!"

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"And there's the legal aspect to consider," the Boss points out.

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"Leave it with us," I say, quelling his panic.

"How will you find them?" the Boss asks.

"Torrenting is simple to track down with modern firewall technology."

"Unless they're using a VPN, of course," the PFY says.

"But even then I think we'd be able to find them," I assure the Boss.

"Okay, so how do you do it?"

"The firewall separates different types of traffic, and highlights anything which might be considered unusual. It'll then raise a flag with us."

"And... why hasn't it raised a flag before now?" the Boss asks.

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"A good question. Maybe the traffic is at such a low level that it's not considered significant."

"OR, it may have always been at a high level and the firewall has 'learned' that it's normal," the PFY adds.

"They said they were downloading entire TV series - and movies," he adds.

"Hmmm." I say.

...

The Boss is concerned about a conversation overheard in the Gents at the pub across the road and wants to be sure we're not a hotbed of piracy.

...

"Well?" he asks.

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"We'll just take a look at the firewall," the PFY says.

>tapity< >click< >tap< >tap< >clickety< >click<

"Hmm. No torrenting going on that I can see. Lots of web activity, but no torrenting."

"Could you stop the web activity?"

"Let's just take a breath and consider that question..."

"What?"

"You'd be 'turning off the internet' for most of our users - a move that'd be as well received as a chilli oil enema."

"Can't you turn off part of the internet?" the Boss suggests.

"Which part would you like?"

"I don't know, the piracy part?"

"Hang on, I'll just see if the firewall has a checkbox for that with a PIRACY ALARM sound preconfigured. >clicky< No, it looks like they missed that out when they were writing the software. A real oversight..."

"What are all those red items?" the Boss asks, pointing at the Firewall settings page.

"They're the firewall modules that you can subscribe to, but which we don't subscribe to."

"And what do they do?"

"Oh, well this one here, it generates a bit of additional revenue for the firewall company. The one below it generates a LOT of additional revenue for the firewall company AND also provides the firewall company with data about our networks and how they work. The next option is a cloud management option where we can expose parts of our firewall management interface to the internet in a currently secure way so that when their security is compromised we'll be toast. Great feature."

"Shouldn't we be... subscribing to some of those?"

"We did the math, and we're on the fence as to whether it's cheaper to just buy a new firewall each year than to subscribe to all the services. That said, even with our base subscription we should still be able to see torrenting."

"So why can't you?" the Boss asks.

"Probably because no one's torrenting at the moment."

"So how would you know?"

"Oh, we'll just look through the logs."

"And what will you do when you see something?"

"We track any machines down by their IP addresses and investigate."

"Which means?"

"Find the machine, uplift it and take a copy of the data - for 'evidential purposes'."

"Or possibly two copies," the PFY says. "Just to be safe."

"But only if the piracy is really bad," I add.

"And the shows are particularly good," the PFY chips in.

"Sometimes we actually let the machines run, particularly if they're part way through a download of a pre-release movie," I say, just to clarify.