This was how I gained full sysadmin access to our college's VAX 11/780 mini computer in late 1986. This machine ran pretty much everything from accounting to ex

This was how I gained full sysadmin access to our college's VAX 11/780 mini computer in late 1986. This machine ran pretty much everything from accounting to exam marking. There were three terminals that the admins would logon to pretty much regularly on the "student" side of the computer room. I knocked up a script to run on these three terminals that looked exactly like the standard login and mailed me the credentials entered before displaying the standard "incorrect username/password" (and then silently logoff). The risk for me, had the IT team been a bit more up on their game, was spotting my account being logged into these three terminals for long periods of time with me no-where to be seen :) I kept silent about this until years afterwards for fear of being chucked out of college, which to be honest would've been a good thing seeing as the course was a waste of time.