The meaning of BOFH

Written by Piers Cawley on

Just in case you didn’t know, BOFH stands for “Bastard Operator From Hell”, a character invented by Simon Travaglia and patron saint of cynical systems administrators everywhere. The original BOFH articles were a lightning rod, used by stressed admins as a way of dealing with idiot lusers. Even if you never acted like the BOFH, you could think “What’s your username? … clickety-click” and all would be well for a couple of moments.

Just in case you didn’t know, BOFH stands for “Bastard Operator From Hell”, a character invented by Simon Travaglia and patron saint of cynical systems administrators everywhere. The original BOFH articles were a lightning rod, used by stressed admins as a way of dealing with idiot lusers. Even if you never acted like the BOFH, you could think “What’s your username? … clickety-click” and all would be well for a couple of moments.

So, back when I was a sysadmin and on the UK naming committee, which later morphed into Nominet, I registered the bofh.org.uk domain, and have been using it for coming up on 10 years now.

Which is why any phishing attempt that shows up purporting to be from servicebofh.org.uk@ is even less likely to get me to open its attachment than usual. “Listen squire, if you were the real ‘Bofh management’ I would have been disconnnected from the internet and lying bleeding in a ditch already.”

I think the best bit is “Bofh Antivirus” concept. Here’s the mail for your reading pleasure:

Dear Bofh Member,

We have temporarily suspended your email account pdcawley@bofh.org.uk.

This might be due to either of the following reasons:

1. A recent change in your personal information (i.e. change of address).
2. Submiting invalid information during the initial sign up process.
3. An innability to accurately verify your selected option of subscription due to an internal error within our processors.
See the details to reactivate your Bofh account.

Sincerely,The Bofh Support Team






+** Attachment: No Virus (Clean)
+** Bofh Antivirus - www.bofh.org.uk
It's quite lovely really...
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