6 ms·

I was almost suspended at school eight years ago for using `net send` from .bat files and because I had Everest portable on my network drive (a tool that lists

by Ambroos 11y ago

I was almost suspended at school eight years ago for using `net send` from .bat files and because I had Everest portable on my network drive (a tool that lists system specs, I was curious what hardware the PC's had). The guy that managed the network at the time was almost personally offended and accused me of 'hacking' the network with dangerous tools. He got the school board involved, my parents had to go talk to the headmaster. My parents and I had to sign a contract which said that any other 'unauthorised' use of the school network would get me suspended for 3 days. If you have one bitter person working somewhere and nobody knows enough about something to stop them, you can get these power-mad types. Probably happens a lot at schools with just one network administrator.

verbin217 11y ago
The degree to which kids get fucked with before they're even allowed to enter society necessitates people like that exist. Working at a school isn't exactly esteemed. You were both smart enough to see through the situation and to... Not work at a school. We just keep putting the wrong people in the right place to exacerbate a negative feedback loop.
kall 11y ago
We had a lot of fun with net send at my all laptop school. IIRC there was even a shared address book file with everyone's hostname. It didn't bother the admins, but understandably the teachers.
petercooper 11y ago
Haha, I did the same thing (with net send, which I'd forgotten all about till you said it) when our school got its first network - around 98 or so. I rigged up a QBasic program to use net send to create a school wide chatroom of sorts (I think I used it to sync a filename on a network share rather than send the actual chat though). Never got caught but they managed to disable the functionality and that was that. It's ridiculous how mad they all got about it though.
- mondoshawan 11y ago
  Chandler, perhaps? I attended a junior high school there which had this rickety chat system that functioned exactly like that. It was kinda functioning when I got there, but I took the app home and hacked it up considerably to be more stable, more colors for text, etc. Ended up leaving the updated source on the machines one day before I left the school for high school. Quite fun days, indeed.
  - petercooper 11y ago
    Nope, I'm in the UK. I think a lot of schools all jumped on the bandwagon and had a couple of miscreants who knew some QBasic though! :-)
vkjv 11y ago
I must have gone to a great high school. I actually hacked our systems a few times. We used a piece of software to lock down the PCs, IIRC, called Fool Proof. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be ironic, because it didn't take long to figure out that it kept the clear text admin password in swap. The machines didn't have BIOS passwords, so it was pretty easy to boot into a hex editor and dig it out. When my teacher found out I did this, he praised my ingenuity and even got me involved in vetting alternative options, despite the fact that I had been handing the password around to friends like candy.
- ryukafalz 11y ago
  Did you have a clue as to where in swap the data was stored? Looking through a swap partition in a hex editor sounds mind-numbing.
  - mckiddy 11y ago
    Plaintext actually stands out pretty easily in a hex editor, just because everything else is basically gibberish.
    - firebones 11y ago
      And never underestimate the amount of time that a teenager, with all the time in the world, would dedicate to this.
  - vkjv 11y ago
    The password preamble included the string `FOOLPR`. If I recall correctly, I just did a search for `FOOL` on a whim and it turned up only a few results.
girvo 11y ago
I broke through our Novell's systems "defences" numerous times. Our IT coordinator hated me (somewhat rightly so), and came at me wanting blood... But luckily I was always a good student, and friendly with the vice principal (who had fielded questions about what I was doing on the PCs when I was in primary school, he was the principal then), so the last time I was banned from using computers on school grounds for year 12, and that was the end of it. My final sin? I gave Quake 1 with the Darkplaces engine to a friend, who promptly transferred it to every computer. The IT coord decided it was me who did it, even though I had no idea it was happening. Oh well, all worked out in the end :)

by Ambroos 11y ago

verbin217 11y ago

The degree to which kids get fucked with before they're even allowed to enter society necessitates people like that exist. Working at a school isn't exactly esteemed. You were both smart enough to see through the situation and to... Not work at a school. We just keep putting the wrong people in the right place to exacerbate a negative feedback loop.

kall 11y ago

We had a lot of fun with net send at my all laptop school. IIRC there was even a shared address book file with everyone's hostname. It didn't bother the admins, but understandably the teachers.

petercooper 11y ago

Haha, I did the same thing (with net send, which I'd forgotten all about till you said it) when our school got its first network - around 98 or so. I rigged up a QBasic program to use net send to create a school wide chatroom of sorts (I think I used it to sync a filename on a network share rather than send the actual chat though). Never got caught but they managed to disable the functionality and that was that. It's ridiculous how mad they all got about it though.

mondoshawan 11y ago
Chandler, perhaps? I attended a junior high school there which had this rickety chat system that functioned exactly like that. It was kinda functioning when I got there, but I took the app home and hacked it up considerably to be more stable, more colors for text, etc. Ended up leaving the updated source on the machines one day before I left the school for high school. Quite fun days, indeed.
- petercooper 11y ago
  Nope, I'm in the UK. I think a lot of schools all jumped on the bandwagon and had a couple of miscreants who knew some QBasic though! :-)

vkjv 11y ago

I must have gone to a great high school. I actually hacked our systems a few times. We used a piece of software to lock down the PCs, IIRC, called Fool Proof. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be ironic, because it didn't take long to figure out that it kept the clear text admin password in swap. The machines didn't have BIOS passwords, so it was pretty easy to boot into a hex editor and dig it out. When my teacher found out I did this, he praised my ingenuity and even got me involved in vetting alternative options, despite the fact that I had been handing the password around to friends like candy.

ryukafalz 11y ago
Did you have a clue as to where in swap the data was stored? Looking through a swap partition in a hex editor sounds mind-numbing.
- mckiddy 11y ago
  Plaintext actually stands out pretty easily in a hex editor, just because everything else is basically gibberish.
  - firebones 11y ago
    And never underestimate the amount of time that a teenager, with all the time in the world, would dedicate to this.
- vkjv 11y ago
  The password preamble included the string `FOOLPR`. If I recall correctly, I just did a search for `FOOL` on a whim and it turned up only a few results.

girvo 11y ago

I broke through our Novell's systems "defences" numerous times. Our IT coordinator hated me (somewhat rightly so), and came at me wanting blood... But luckily I was always a good student, and friendly with the vice principal (who had fielded questions about what I was doing on the PCs when I was in primary school, he was the principal then), so the last time I was banned from using computers on school grounds for year 12, and that was the end of it. My final sin? I gave Quake 1 with the Darkplaces engine to a friend, who promptly transferred it to every computer. The IT coord decided it was me who did it, even though I had no idea it was happening. Oh well, all worked out in the end :)