This is a poem written by my Manager at the time, Louis van Ekert, and read by him at my 21^st birthday party in October 2001.  The team I worked in, was called AST – or the Access Security Team.  We did all the Network and Infrastructure security for one of the large Aussie Banks, and I had just completed an Ethical Hacking course offered by our company, and managed to out-hack our best ethical hackers from across AP (to my surprise) so I had a bit of a reputation at the time…

 

Anyhow, without further ado:

 

The geek from AST  (adaptation of The Man from Snowy River)

 

There was panic at the shite deck

So alerts were paged around,

And the geek from AST was on his way,

And was bringing extra firewalls –

They were worth ten thousand pound.

 

For all the nerds had gathered to the fray

All the weird and noted crackers

From the warez sites near and far

Had connected to the network overnight.

 

AST-ers love new firewalls

With a tripwire installation,

And this team snoop crackers with delight.

 

The AST geek was Tim Stevens

Who is l337 and on the up and up

The PFY with attitude to go.

But few can ride beside him when his cable modem’s up

He can go wherever geek and nerd can go.

 

He had come to boot a firewall by hand.

No better hacker ever held root power,

For no black hat can fool him

While Tim’s firewall still stand –

He learnt to hack instead of sleeping back at home.

 

So Tim got there,

A stripling and a tall and weedy geek;

He had something of a mobile undersized

With an MP3 attachment – genuine Ericsson at least

And such as are warez d00dz prized.

 

Tim is smart and tough and wiry –

Just the sort that wouldn’t say die –

There is courage in his quick and impatient tread,

And he bears the badge of l337-ness

In his bright and fiery eye,

And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.

 

And down at the Ryde Computer Centre,

Where the firewalls guard their servers without fail,

Where the air is cold as ice,

And the white lights fairly blaze

At midnight in the cold and frosty hall,

The GEEK from AST is a household word today,

And crackers tell the story of his hide.