6 ms·

I drew the ire of our security services in a much dumber way sometime in the early nineties; after having seen Wargames, I set up my MicroVAX, rescued from a du

by lb1lf 6y ago

I drew the ire of our security services in a much dumber way sometime in the early nineties; after having seen Wargames, I set up my MicroVAX, rescued from a dumpster at the local bank, to ID as a DoD box whenever any of my friends dialled into it. A few weeks into this, I get a summons to get down to the local police station ASAP. The commissioner then gives me a good verbal beating for being such a stupid kid; apparently someone had dialled into the uVAX by mistake or wardialling, figured it was a real DoD machine, had reported the security breach and had gotten all sorts of gears moving. He wound up the sermon by telling me whoever had called him from the relevant department at military intelligence had chuckled and told him they kind of found it funny - but could he please get hold of me and tell me to stop doing it immediately, or else have my landline terminated?

jessaustin 6y ago
I can see why that would have been intimidating. With the decades of experience you've had since, do you think he could have gotten your landline terminated? What would be the legal argument?
- lb1lf 6y ago
  -I am quite convinced it was just meant to drive home the point that they were being serious about me changing the welcome message. I do not think there is any legal way they could have severed my (well, my parents') phone service over such an issue - but then again, I had no desire to have to explain to my parents why the phone was dead, and promptly replaced the welcome with something along the lines of "This computer is so secret the DoD told the op not to ID it!" (Which, while rather flippant, was definitely true... Ah, the joys of being fifteen!)
- jaywalk 6y ago
  I can't even imagine there is a valid legal argument. If somebody calls me, I can say whatever I want. If I want to answer the phone by saying "Department of Defense, how can I help you?" the First Amendment guarantees me the right to do that. Now, I certainly could not call other people and claim to be the Department of Defense. That's fraud. The same applies if I had done something like put up flyers claiming my phone number was related to the DoD or something like that. I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I see it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lb1lf 6y ago
    I am in Norway, so the First Amendment carries little weight around here; our equivalent is 'Article 100' (of the Constitution) stating pretty much the same thing as the First Amendment. (This is hardly relevant; I just grasped the opportunity to stress that the HN crowd resides in the most peculiar places...)
    - jaywalk 6y ago
      Ah, I just assumed you were in the US because we actually have a Department of Defense.
      - pantheon 6y ago
        Every country has a Department of Defense.
        jaywalk 6y ago
        But it's not necessarily called the Department of Defense. That's literally the name of it in the US.
        outworlder 6y ago
        Wasn't it the Department of War, a long time ago?
    - Jenz 6y ago
      Now, I definitely am biased, being a norwegian myself. But I see people mentioning themselves being norwegians everywhere here on HN. I don’t recall seeing half as many people going around saying, «I’m a dane» or similar; this seems peculiar, Norway is small. I wonder if it actually is at it seems to me, or if I just miss these seemingly non–but—actually-not–non-existant remarks.
andrewflnr 6y ago
It's a shame the commissioner couldn't have had a bit more of a sense of humor about it. Except for him being a jerk the story is pretty much pure slapstick.
vaguesortof 6y ago
What do you mean 'id as a DOD box'? Do you mean hostname/splash screen/ip .... I'm missing something
- netsharc 6y ago
  Kids these days ;) . Before ssh there was telnet, and a telnet server can write a greeting text before asking for your username (it can even be configured to skip the login and just show you a shell), e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tno79Q2X-Sg&t=31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tno79Q2X-Sg&t=31 In that video it says "User Access Verification", he probably changed his to "Dept. of Defense"...
  - outworlder 6y ago
    Get off my lawn! Telnet requires a functioning network stack. Before we had that, we had modems, which I assume was the case since wardialing is mentioned. They could run ANY protocol - or indeed none at all. You could tie it directly to the text I/O of any program(easy on unix systems, not as easy on MSDOS or early Windows versions). Many "BBS" systems worked this way. EDIT: also early "multiplayer" games, which would talk to the modem directly. I've spend hours playing Descent over a 9600bps modem connection. That was only running... whatever protocol Descent used. You kids and your fancy packets. If a file was being transferred you could do nothing else. If you were specially high-tech, you would use ZModem for the transfer. If not, you would be using something like XModem, or even Kermit or something proprietary.
  - def8cefe 6y ago
    You can write a greeting before login with SSH as well. Good place for some ascii art.
downerending 6y ago
I miss the days when you could do stuff like this without ending up in prison.
- grkvlt 6y ago
  I wouldn't worry. You can still set up a computer pretending to offer a DoD login, in fact as many as you want/can afford on AWS, and you still won't go to prison. IANAL, but go ahead and knock yourself out! It'll be fun/character building/a learning experience no matter what happens.
- filoleg 6y ago
  You were running a lower risk of getting caught, but if you got caught, you could easily get slammed with all kinds of outlandish stuff back then, mostly due to the general public ignorance of computing and hacking. These days, you have a way higher chance of getting caught, but the punishment is more reasonable and fair imo (even though it is still way overblown most of the time). What instantly came to my mind was the Kevin Mitnick trial, where "law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to 'start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone'"[0]. 0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest,_conviction,_and_incarceration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest,_convicti...
  - bjoli 6y ago
    I don't know, maybe Kevin was a real whistling virtuoso. Raymond Chen could scream the 300 baud carrier tone: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20111111-00/?p=9133 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20111111-00/?p=91...

by lb1lf 6y ago

jessaustin 6y ago

I can see why that would have been intimidating. With the decades of experience you've had since, do you think he could have gotten your landline terminated? What would be the legal argument?

lb1lf 6y ago
-I am quite convinced it was just meant to drive home the point that they were being serious about me changing the welcome message. I do not think there is any legal way they could have severed my (well, my parents') phone service over such an issue - but then again, I had no desire to have to explain to my parents why the phone was dead, and promptly replaced the welcome with something along the lines of "This computer is so secret the DoD told the op not to ID it!" (Which, while rather flippant, was definitely true... Ah, the joys of being fifteen!)
jaywalk 6y ago
I can't even imagine there is a valid legal argument. If somebody calls me, I can say whatever I want. If I want to answer the phone by saying "Department of Defense, how can I help you?" the First Amendment guarantees me the right to do that. Now, I certainly could not call other people and claim to be the Department of Defense. That's fraud. The same applies if I had done something like put up flyers claiming my phone number was related to the DoD or something like that. I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I see it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lb1lf 6y ago
  I am in Norway, so the First Amendment carries little weight around here; our equivalent is 'Article 100' (of the Constitution) stating pretty much the same thing as the First Amendment. (This is hardly relevant; I just grasped the opportunity to stress that the HN crowd resides in the most peculiar places...)
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    Ah, I just assumed you were in the US because we actually have a Department of Defense.
    - pantheon 6y ago
      Every country has a Department of Defense.
      - jaywalk 6y ago
        But it's not necessarily called the Department of Defense. That's literally the name of it in the US.
        outworlder 6y ago
        Wasn't it the Department of War, a long time ago?
  - Jenz 6y ago
    Now, I definitely am biased, being a norwegian myself. But I see people mentioning themselves being norwegians everywhere here on HN. I don’t recall seeing half as many people going around saying, «I’m a dane» or similar; this seems peculiar, Norway is small. I wonder if it actually is at it seems to me, or if I just miss these seemingly non–but—actually-not–non-existant remarks.

andrewflnr 6y ago

It's a shame the commissioner couldn't have had a bit more of a sense of humor about it. Except for him being a jerk the story is pretty much pure slapstick.

vaguesortof 6y ago

What do you mean 'id as a DOD box'? Do you mean hostname/splash screen/ip .... I'm missing something

netsharc 6y ago
Kids these days ;) . Before ssh there was telnet, and a telnet server can write a greeting text before asking for your username (it can even be configured to skip the login and just show you a shell), e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tno79Q2X-Sg&t=31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tno79Q2X-Sg&t=31 In that video it says "User Access Verification", he probably changed his to "Dept. of Defense"...
- outworlder 6y ago
  Get off my lawn! Telnet requires a functioning network stack. Before we had that, we had modems, which I assume was the case since wardialing is mentioned. They could run ANY protocol - or indeed none at all. You could tie it directly to the text I/O of any program(easy on unix systems, not as easy on MSDOS or early Windows versions). Many "BBS" systems worked this way. EDIT: also early "multiplayer" games, which would talk to the modem directly. I've spend hours playing Descent over a 9600bps modem connection. That was only running... whatever protocol Descent used. You kids and your fancy packets. If a file was being transferred you could do nothing else. If you were specially high-tech, you would use ZModem for the transfer. If not, you would be using something like XModem, or even Kermit or something proprietary.
- def8cefe 6y ago
  You can write a greeting before login with SSH as well. Good place for some ascii art.

downerending 6y ago

I miss the days when you could do stuff like this without ending up in prison.

grkvlt 6y ago
I wouldn't worry. You can still set up a computer pretending to offer a DoD login, in fact as many as you want/can afford on AWS, and you still won't go to prison. IANAL, but go ahead and knock yourself out! It'll be fun/character building/a learning experience no matter what happens.
filoleg 6y ago
You were running a lower risk of getting caught, but if you got caught, you could easily get slammed with all kinds of outlandish stuff back then, mostly due to the general public ignorance of computing and hacking. These days, you have a way higher chance of getting caught, but the punishment is more reasonable and fair imo (even though it is still way overblown most of the time). What instantly came to my mind was the Kevin Mitnick trial, where "law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to 'start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone'"[0]. 0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest,_conviction,_and_incarceration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest,_convicti...
- bjoli 6y ago
  I don't know, maybe Kevin was a real whistling virtuoso. Raymond Chen could scream the 300 baud carrier tone: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20111111-00/?p=9133 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20111111-00/?p=91...