4 ms·

Back in 1999 when I was learning to code (PHP obviously), I was stoked to discover the mail() function. Up to that point I'd only been doing HTML and JavaScript

Back in 1999 when I was learning to code (PHP obviously), I was stoked to discover the mail() function. Up to that point I'd only been doing HTML and JavaScript coding so my newfound ability to send emails was a pretty big deal. I asked my friend what would happen if I put the mail call inside a while(true) statement. He said it would run until the server hit the 30 second timeout. I asked how many emails my server could send in 30 seconds but he didn't know. I decided to to find out, directing all the emails to my hotmail account. Little did I know, that my ISP & hosting provider had disabled the default 30-second timeout so the script kept running. A few hundred thousand emails later I was having second thoughts about my poorly planned experiment. The next day I got a phone call from my ISP. Turns out Microsoft perceived it as a DDOS attack and blocked all traffic from my ISP. And so for a day basically no one in my city could access their Hotmail accounts or any other Microsoft properties. Oops.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
disordinary 10y ago
I was on a Cathay Pacific flight a few years ago and was looking at all the games they had in the in flight entertainment system. This was an older plane with really bad games, one of which was a number guessing game. I was bored and so wondered what would happen if I entered a negative number as my guess. The entire in flight entertainment system on the plane was down for a couple of hours until the crew figured out how to restart the system properly.
- grzm 10y ago
  I think you mean Cathay Pacific? Edit: Glad to help! I was going to delete after you corrected, but it looks like I can't :/ Interesting note: Google doesn't even give me the "Did you mean" option when I tested "cafe pacific". Must be a pretty common mistake. I've always wanted to fly Cathay Pacific, as I've heard the service is fantastic. Never had the opportunity yet, though.
  - disordinary 10y ago
    I do indeed :)
  - disordinary 10y ago
    A lot of those big airlines are a mixed bag. If you get one of their newer planes they are world class, but we were on an aging 747, it creaked and groaned, had the aforementioned in flight entertainment system, and the toilets stunk up all the rows near them. But some of their planes are beautiful and the service is top notch. This was a few years ago but even in economy they gave everyone a little pack with toothbrush, ear plugs, travel socks, and those masks you put on to sleep when it's light. I've had a similar experience on Lufthansa where one flight was an amazing plane with a bar downstairs, and all the mod cons, and then I had a flight from Frankfurt to LA which was 12 hours without any back of seat in flight entertainment (it just had a few screens hanging from the ceiling). This was only three years ago. That's why I try and fly Air NZ wherever I can, it's not the best airline in the world but it's consistently good across the whole fleet.
- _audakel 10y ago
  I was worried you where going to say it took the plane offline
  - disordinary 10y ago
    There was that story a year or two ago about someone who took control of a plane through the in flight entertainment systems. I don't know if it was scare mongering or not but you'd expect that the entertainment system and flight control computers were on separate networks.... wouldn't you?
    - jdimov10 10y ago
      I don't just expect them to be on separate networks - I expect them to be fully air-gapped!
      - fpoling 10y ago
        Entertainment systems typically can show flight info. They receive it through something like ARINC one-way serial link.
      - woliveirajr 10y ago
        Air-gapped might get in trouble too in case of depressurization. It'll be almost vacuum gapped then.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    This reminds me of the (possibly urban legend) story of the F-16 navigation system that turned upside down on crossing the equator. https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html
    - jobigoud 10y ago
      There is another one that is not an urban legend, in 2007 a group of six F-22 completely lost their navigation and partially lost communication when crossing the international date line. They had to visually follow their tankers back to Hawaii. http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets+Zapped+by+International+Date+Line/article6225.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets+Zapped+by...
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I love testing things like that. I was a caller for my University's Phonathon. Somebody realized that the software had never been tested, so they asked a number of the frequent callers to test the system. I wondered what would happen if I put a negative number in for a pledge. The system accepted the input, but the systems it was tied in to did some really weird things with it. The pledge was automatically marked as completed, because the amount paid (0) was larger than the amount owed (a large negative number). Recognition for gifts isn't based on paid amount though, it's based on amount "credited" to the donor. This makes sure that people get recognized for matching gifts from their companies, but the companies get the tax documents, etc. The recognition amount was stored as an unsigned integer with 4 decimal places. When a negative pledge was entered, an integer underflow occurred and you suddenly were the largest donor to the university by a huge margin. Funny thing was that anybody could have messed the system up, because you could also enter a negative number on the online pledge page as a donor. That being said, professional fundraisers are very familiar with the largest donors at an organization. Somebody would have caught the error immediately, and there wasn't any way to screw up the financials/bank statements, but it was a fun little error to uncover.
- chiefalchemist 10y ago
  Funny enough, a few months ago I passed a value to a WordPress function, a function that evidently wasn't checking what was sent to it, and got something wonky back. I open a bug report. The reply was, "Well, you're not supposed to do that." My reply was, "NO. You're not supposed to let me do that." I believe the code went unfixed. Crazy.
ec109685 10y ago
More like a DOS attack given the one server nature of it.
- nkozyra 10y ago
  OP didn't say it was a DDOS, just that MS treated it as such. Given the ISP-level block, that makes sense.
Kluny 10y ago
I did one of those in my first couple months of my first development job. I put a mailto in a recursive function for debugging. I thought that the function wasn't working, and since it was 5:30, decided that was enough for the day, shut everything down and went home. On Monday I came back to over a thousand debugging emails in my inbox, and everyone in the office's email was down. Well done me.
- lightlyused 10y ago
  Had something similar happen with log4j and sending emails on errors. One day the database was down, and one of the categories was such that it would log database issues. You know what happened next.
LoSboccacc 10y ago
What a time, when you got a stern phone call and a scolding for mistakes instead of a full swat steam and some ventilation.
0xmohit 10y ago
I asked my friend what would happen if I put the mail call inside a while(true) statement. Amusing. I did something similar in 1995. The difference being that I used mail(1). IIRC, it was something like: while : ; do mail ... sleep 1s done (I did this to a friend who refused to stop forwarding trash messages. I did this so that his inbox could run out of quota.)
- brianmurphy 10y ago
  We did this one better in 1993/94 at NAU. Taking our lessons of shell scripting while loops, redirection from a file, and the write command, we'd flood our friends terminal screens with endless scrolls of ascii penises.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

disordinary 10y ago

I was on a Cathay Pacific flight a few years ago and was looking at all the games they had in the in flight entertainment system. This was an older plane with really bad games, one of which was a number guessing game. I was bored and so wondered what would happen if I entered a negative number as my guess. The entire in flight entertainment system on the plane was down for a couple of hours until the crew figured out how to restart the system properly.

grzm 10y ago
I think you mean Cathay Pacific? Edit: Glad to help! I was going to delete after you corrected, but it looks like I can't :/ Interesting note: Google doesn't even give me the "Did you mean" option when I tested "cafe pacific". Must be a pretty common mistake. I've always wanted to fly Cathay Pacific, as I've heard the service is fantastic. Never had the opportunity yet, though.
- disordinary 10y ago
  I do indeed :)
- disordinary 10y ago
  A lot of those big airlines are a mixed bag. If you get one of their newer planes they are world class, but we were on an aging 747, it creaked and groaned, had the aforementioned in flight entertainment system, and the toilets stunk up all the rows near them. But some of their planes are beautiful and the service is top notch. This was a few years ago but even in economy they gave everyone a little pack with toothbrush, ear plugs, travel socks, and those masks you put on to sleep when it's light. I've had a similar experience on Lufthansa where one flight was an amazing plane with a bar downstairs, and all the mod cons, and then I had a flight from Frankfurt to LA which was 12 hours without any back of seat in flight entertainment (it just had a few screens hanging from the ceiling). This was only three years ago. That's why I try and fly Air NZ wherever I can, it's not the best airline in the world but it's consistently good across the whole fleet.
_audakel 10y ago
I was worried you where going to say it took the plane offline
- disordinary 10y ago
  There was that story a year or two ago about someone who took control of a plane through the in flight entertainment systems. I don't know if it was scare mongering or not but you'd expect that the entertainment system and flight control computers were on separate networks.... wouldn't you?
  - jdimov10 10y ago
    I don't just expect them to be on separate networks - I expect them to be fully air-gapped!
    - fpoling 10y ago
      Entertainment systems typically can show flight info. They receive it through something like ARINC one-way serial link.
    - woliveirajr 10y ago
      Air-gapped might get in trouble too in case of depressurization. It'll be almost vacuum gapped then.
- pjc50 10y ago
  This reminds me of the (possibly urban legend) story of the F-16 navigation system that turned upside down on crossing the equator. https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/3.44.html
  - jobigoud 10y ago
    There is another one that is not an urban legend, in 2007 a group of six F-22 completely lost their navigation and partially lost communication when crossing the international date line. They had to visually follow their tankers back to Hawaii. http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets+Zapped+by+International+Date+Line/article6225.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets+Zapped+by...
Declanomous 10y ago
I love testing things like that. I was a caller for my University's Phonathon. Somebody realized that the software had never been tested, so they asked a number of the frequent callers to test the system. I wondered what would happen if I put a negative number in for a pledge. The system accepted the input, but the systems it was tied in to did some really weird things with it. The pledge was automatically marked as completed, because the amount paid (0) was larger than the amount owed (a large negative number). Recognition for gifts isn't based on paid amount though, it's based on amount "credited" to the donor. This makes sure that people get recognized for matching gifts from their companies, but the companies get the tax documents, etc. The recognition amount was stored as an unsigned integer with 4 decimal places. When a negative pledge was entered, an integer underflow occurred and you suddenly were the largest donor to the university by a huge margin. Funny thing was that anybody could have messed the system up, because you could also enter a negative number on the online pledge page as a donor. That being said, professional fundraisers are very familiar with the largest donors at an organization. Somebody would have caught the error immediately, and there wasn't any way to screw up the financials/bank statements, but it was a fun little error to uncover.
chiefalchemist 10y ago
Funny enough, a few months ago I passed a value to a WordPress function, a function that evidently wasn't checking what was sent to it, and got something wonky back. I open a bug report. The reply was, "Well, you're not supposed to do that." My reply was, "NO. You're not supposed to let me do that." I believe the code went unfixed. Crazy.

ec109685 10y ago

More like a DOS attack given the one server nature of it.

nkozyra 10y ago
OP didn't say it was a DDOS, just that MS treated it as such. Given the ISP-level block, that makes sense.

Kluny 10y ago

I did one of those in my first couple months of my first development job. I put a mailto in a recursive function for debugging. I thought that the function wasn't working, and since it was 5:30, decided that was enough for the day, shut everything down and went home. On Monday I came back to over a thousand debugging emails in my inbox, and everyone in the office's email was down. Well done me.

lightlyused 10y ago
Had something similar happen with log4j and sending emails on errors. One day the database was down, and one of the categories was such that it would log database issues. You know what happened next.

LoSboccacc 10y ago

What a time, when you got a stern phone call and a scolding for mistakes instead of a full swat steam and some ventilation.

0xmohit 10y ago

I asked my friend what would happen if I put the mail call inside a while(true) statement. Amusing. I did something similar in 1995. The difference being that I used mail(1). IIRC, it was something like: while : ; do mail ... sleep 1s done (I did this to a friend who refused to stop forwarding trash messages. I did this so that his inbox could run out of quota.)

brianmurphy 10y ago
We did this one better in 1993/94 at NAU. Taking our lessons of shell scripting while loops, redirection from a file, and the write command, we'd flood our friends terminal screens with endless scrolls of ascii penises.