Can you help Fr

[G+_T Nohands]

Can you help Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ  ? Way back last year I asked for help when I got locked out of one of my manage switches that had NO reset button. You picked my question to answer on the show and started talking about OOB management. I could not get my win 7 laptop to make a RS232. Win 7 took the shell portal out and I tried using putty but no matter what, I could not get a layer 2 response from the switch and I was plugged directly into the console port. So first can you go back review what you said on that episode and pickup from where you left off on OOB management and explain how to use console ports in win 7 that has no native shell command prompt? Second yes I have recovered my switch, well my friend did. He's a white hat for the navy, a grey hat in public, and a black hat at conventions. He had me open a couple of ports on my router's firewall and 3 hours later he rebooted my switches and router. After my network came back up the switch was reset to mfg AND my router came back up with the settings like I had it with the ports I opened set back to close. Can you please tell me how he was able to communicate with devices on my intranet with just a few open ports? Also can you figure out how he could talk to the switch without physically being connected to the console port? I asked how he cleaned up some network configs and just ghost out rebooting the router with the ports ending up closed like he was never even there (CREEPY). His reply was he couldn't tell me that I would just end up snooping on other networks and get in bad bad trouble then laughed, like having that knowledge would be a gateway drug to becoming a black hat. Okay he's a government white hat as his navel career and a lot of what he does is classified, though I think our government might have him do dishonest Black hatting instead of just defensive IT security work. Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ  do you know how or have an idea how he could make changes, reboot half my network at once, and then leave no trace he was there?  I would really like to know how to protect myself from anyone like him. Was opening the ports from inside the network the only thing keeping him out, are the soho routers really weaker and more exploits than a full on enterprise router? I've been eyeing a cisco 2900 series but just to start so that it can take the upgrade module that I want was quoted $1400 and that's only with the 4 ports for the network 1 console port and 1  lan port to plug the line from the modem to get internet connection. Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ  can you help me solve these puzzles and I would like to know how to have someone open up router ports the find a device like a computer and operate it with something like remote desktop so I can trouble shoot for my friends who just are not getting it through their heads that I can't use my hands and this is the only computer I can operate :/ I'm sorry this is so long yet these are some of many issues I'm fighting with for some time now.