Bittorrent is Evil, Remember?

Got an interesting call today.
————
guy on phone:
Hi, I’m with thje intrusion detection team- we had a wolverine alert that your machine set off, I was wondering if you could enable your machine so I could remote in and check it out and make sure you’re not infected.

me:
Which machine was it?

guy on phone:
*reads off a machine number*

me:
Ah. ok, you won’t be able to- that’s my laptop, and it’s not running windows, it’s running linux. Was it a bittorrent alarm it set off? I was downloading an new iso for gentoo.

guy on phone:
Um, I’m not sure, you’ll have to ask the security guys. You said this machine wasn’t running windows?

me:
Ok… how do I explain this. I’m the linux administrator. My laptop is running Linux. I used bittorrent to download a Linux iso.

guy on phone:
You’re not allowed to have that installed.

me:
*exasperated* don’t worry, it was a legitimate use. This is a normal thing and completely legal for me to do.

guy on phone:
ok, well, you’re going to be getting a call from the security team. I’m going to forward this ticket to them.

me:
Ok, fine- make sure you tell them that I was downloading a “Gentoo 2006 LiveCD iso”.

guy on phone:
*he repeats it back*
ok, I’ll let them know. *click*
————

I know the guy was just doing his job, and doesn’t set the rules, but it was still sort of annoying. I know this will lead to me getting the 5th degree for doing my job. My coworker wanted to install gentoo on a spare machine here, and I grabbed an iso and ripped it to disk.

From now on I’ll make sure to grab from a http or ftp site.

What I found really interesting was his reaction to the word bittorrent. It’s automatically assumed I was doing something bad. Looking back, my reaction was interesting as well- my reaction wasn’t fear, it was curiousity- how did I set their scanner off? I wanted to know so I wouldn’t do it again.

By the way, this is my 100th post in WordPress. well- I have about 20 articles in draft mode right now, but that’s still quite a few.