Russian oligarch's financial network crashed thanks to a crank and a cleaner
Jump to main content
REG AD
Networks
Russian oligarch's financial network crashed thanks to a crank and a cleaner What a wind-up!
Simon Sharwood Simon Sharwood
APAC Editor
Published fri 29 May 2026 // 07:32 UTC
ON CALL Welcome to another installment of On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories of tech support jobs that tested your skill, sanity, and sensibilities.This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Nathan" who told us that back in the mists of time, he worked for a small investment company."Its sole purpose was, and probably remains, managing the European investments of a very rich Russian oligarch who shall remain nameless," Nathan told On Call.
REG AD
As befitted the oligarch's wealth, the firm's premises featured an elaborate entrance foyer with a standout feature Nathan described as "a magnificent chandelier suspended from the ceiling with a clockwork mechanism to lower it down for cleaning."
REG AD
Chandeliers don't need to be cleaned every day, but after cleaners got around to the job, an entire floor of the firm lost all network access – WAN and LAN were both deader than Lenin. MORE CONTEXT On-call techie decided job was done and hit the bottle – just before his pager went off
User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave
To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane
Support tech caught by 'Technician Aura': the bug that only hides when you're watching
Nathan did the usual tests without finding the fault, so he decided to have a look at the clockwork mechanism."I finally found the access port, peered inside, and saw half a dozen Ethernet cables tangled and shredded around the gears," he told On Call.That mess left Nathan with another problem: who to blame?"The idiot who thought leaving unprotected cables next to the winch was a good idea, or the Muppet who turned the winch without a care in the world about the cables they must have seen shredding?"Nathan could never find the person who designed the winch. "But the cleaners found out I can swear fluently in three languages," he told On Call.What's the weirdest place you've performed tech support? And what happened while you were there? To share your story, click here to send us an email so On Call can run it on a future Friday. ®
network on call networks russia ethernet outage
REG AD
public sector
ICE to keep an eye on your eyes under $25M biometric scanner deal
And you thought a face recognition app was intrusive?
Security
No fix yet for critical RCE bug in open-source Git service Gogs - exploit module is out
Researcher reported the vuln in March. Maintainers haven't responded to his messages since
PARTNER CONTENT
AI and data sovereignty in Postgres: An answer to the datacenter energy crisis
A billion AI agents walk into a power grid
Legal
23andMe inherits lawsuit over 'disturbing' DNA data breach
California AG claims genetics biz downplayed 2023 mega-leak while paying ransom to attacker
Systems
EU's digital sovereignty boo-boo may be the best thing to ever happen to the project
DIY or die. Just don't let the CIA buy it
software
UCLA seeks pre-litigation resolution with Oracle
Discussion understood to concern delayed SaaS transformation project
MOST POPULAR
AI + ML Google has seriously leaned into AI enshittification lately Security Anthropic to release Mythos-class models to the public Security Disgruntled 0-day hunter 'humiliated' by Microsoft pledges 'bone shattering drop' as Redmond calls cops Operating Systems Linus Torvalds to ‘start being more hardnosed’ about ‘pointless pull requests’ – some of which come from AIs Security Megalodon chums the waters in 5.5K+ GitHub repo poisonings
EVENTS
Overcoming the trade-offs in data sovereignty What does data sovereignty actually mean for your network, which trade-offs are unavoidable? Learn more.