I suppose that the principle of the original Buzzword Bingo — known as Bullshit Bingo to the less exclusive — is well established.
In here I propose a revamped version, which in it’s basic design will require one Intrusion Detection System (or a simple tcpdumpable machine) and one score card. In the pimp-my-game edition, one IDS per player, a syslog(1) daemon and a Perl script are required.
In dynamic, customer-oriented companies dedicated to fostering long-term improvements across the value-chain, you do not simply meet with peo^Wstakeholders. You embrace the full potential of ubiquitous bidrectional communication over all channels.
Unfortunately, this effectively decreases the pedagogical value of some dude shouting BULLSHIT BINGO. But not all hope is lost. All you need to do is
- set up an IDS on a suitable device where each player is assigned a random selection from a pool of buzzwords, and
- set up a reporting mechanism which “knows” the selection assigned to each player to create appropriate events in case one player reaches some number of hits.
Of course, traceroute can be abused as the poor man’s IDS, but snort would be the tool of choice for regular Unix-like environments. Forwarding events through some sort of syslog daemon seems like the common-sense-thing to do.
Add some magic to the resulting logfile (either through the File::Tail Perl Module or through grep/sed/awk).
Given some minimal required dimension of your organization’s campus, the rules of the game can be slightly changed. Assuming you have a good understanding of the correlation between the network topology and the office layout, individual events can be visually mapped using Google Maps. The players would then not be assigned an individual set of buzzwords, but would place their bets on the first office, floor or building to achieve a certain number of events.
Displaying the growth of brown spots across the campus over the past 24 hours may be an interesting “instant replay” feature, but AFAIR there has been a software patent awarded for such a feature recently.
Application Logical Layout
+---------------------+ +------------+
| P1 P2 ... Pn MP |-----| IDS Sensor | <---- Snort Rules
+---------------------+ +------------+
| | | |
: : : | syslog
|
+---------+
+---------------| syslogd | <------- Cascading tbd.
| +---------+
/var/log/buzzword/raw
| +------------------+
+---------> | Filter/Aggregate | <-- Game Rules
+------------------+
| Map/Visualize | <-- Google Maps
+------------------+
|
/srv/www/htdocs/buzzword/* <-----+
Legend:
- P1..Pn: Regular LAN/WAN Ports
- MP: Monitoring Port(s)
Routers and IDS Sensors may be added as required. Depending on performance requirements, syslog receivers may be cascaded to distribute the load of initial filtering.
Credit where credit is due, especially to Dani W. for continuously sharing his know-how and experience in (not only) technical matters.
