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This is hilarious. I have another somewhat related story. Back in 7th grade I stumbled upon the "net send" command. So, bored in the back of class one day, I s

This is hilarious. I have another somewhat related story. Back in 7th grade I stumbled upon the "net send" command. So, bored in the back of class one day, I sent a few messages and saw them pop up simultaneously on all the computers. I thought it was pretty funny. I didn't sent anything vulgar. Just something like, "yo", and "it's Evan" (yes, I put my name). Well, turns out I sent those messages to every computer in the district. Three elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, and the administration building. Maybe 10m later someone from the IT team came and asked who had computer #XX. Obviously was me. Principal claimed I hacked into all the computers and said he'd call me back in for an appropriate punishment. Nothing ever amounted to it. Never got called back in so I had no repercussions.

mittermayr 6y ago
Hah :) That moment of ... did I just do something extraordinary cool... or did I just mess up big time? Or... wait a minute... I JUST DID BOTH!
staticfloat 6y ago
Hah! I did the exact same thing when I discovered the “net send” command. Only me and my friend were playing around so we sent eachother messages like “I know where you live”..... the school tech was cool with me so I didn’t get punished, but quite a few admins were freaked out by these strange messages appearing on their computers.
kbelder 6y ago
Back when I managed a call center, we were just integrating some new messaging software. This was very old-school, IBM 3270 dumb terminals hooked up to the mainframe. One of the team leads was trying to figure it out, and sent a message to her group saying, 'if you can read this, please raise your hand.' Of course, she got it wrong, and sent the message out to the whole corporation. No safeguards against that, at the time. Nothing bad happened, other than severe embarrassment. But I still smile at the thought of the marketing department setting in their offices, hands raised, wondering if it was safe to lower them yet...
slaughtr 6y ago
Dang I got suspended for 2 weeks and wasn't allowed to touch a computer for the remainder of the year when I did this. And I had even managed to figure out how to target it at specific logged-in users!
xaduha 6y ago
Basically same thing happened to me, except it was my teacher and some angry IT guy that gave me a ribbing, principal called him. > "it's Evan" (yes, I put my name) I just sent 'test' and I think it shows IP or computer name, but it didn't really matter, I had to confess when they asked the class who did it. 'net' has so much stuff crammed into it though, it's unbelievable. Feels like a skeleton key that just barely follows rules.
- fullstop 6y ago
  With samba you could spoof the "from" computer name.
sen 6y ago
Similar for me, but I was always a bit morally dyslexic and decided to send “This school has been hacked” or some such. This was before computers were really used in school much other than the 1 computer room to teach touch typing and/or some basics, so our school didn’t have a proper IT team but instead used some local external support business. The school panicked and shut down every computer and printer until they could come “fix” it.. 2 days later. I got suspended for a week and banned from the computer room for a year.
emmelaich 6y ago
SunOS machines and many Unixes had an rwalld daemon, which listened for 'remote write all' messages. I (in Australia) had to contact my brother (in Germany) urgently one day. So I 'rwall'd the machine that I knew he used most often. To great success.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
I discovered and did the same thing (except I didn't put my name they just found where I was seated, poor school, very regimented computer lab). I got suspended. Guess we get different treatment for curiosity after all.

mittermayr 6y ago

Hah :) That moment of ... did I just do something extraordinary cool... or did I just mess up big time? Or... wait a minute... I JUST DID BOTH!

staticfloat 6y ago

Hah! I did the exact same thing when I discovered the “net send” command. Only me and my friend were playing around so we sent eachother messages like “I know where you live”..... the school tech was cool with me so I didn’t get punished, but quite a few admins were freaked out by these strange messages appearing on their computers.

kbelder 6y ago

Back when I managed a call center, we were just integrating some new messaging software. This was very old-school, IBM 3270 dumb terminals hooked up to the mainframe. One of the team leads was trying to figure it out, and sent a message to her group saying, 'if you can read this, please raise your hand.' Of course, she got it wrong, and sent the message out to the whole corporation. No safeguards against that, at the time. Nothing bad happened, other than severe embarrassment. But I still smile at the thought of the marketing department setting in their offices, hands raised, wondering if it was safe to lower them yet...

slaughtr 6y ago

Dang I got suspended for 2 weeks and wasn't allowed to touch a computer for the remainder of the year when I did this. And I had even managed to figure out how to target it at specific logged-in users!

xaduha 6y ago

Basically same thing happened to me, except it was my teacher and some angry IT guy that gave me a ribbing, principal called him. > "it's Evan" (yes, I put my name) I just sent 'test' and I think it shows IP or computer name, but it didn't really matter, I had to confess when they asked the class who did it. 'net' has so much stuff crammed into it though, it's unbelievable. Feels like a skeleton key that just barely follows rules.

fullstop 6y ago
With samba you could spoof the "from" computer name.

sen 6y ago

Similar for me, but I was always a bit morally dyslexic and decided to send “This school has been hacked” or some such. This was before computers were really used in school much other than the 1 computer room to teach touch typing and/or some basics, so our school didn’t have a proper IT team but instead used some local external support business. The school panicked and shut down every computer and printer until they could come “fix” it.. 2 days later. I got suspended for a week and banned from the computer room for a year.

emmelaich 6y ago

SunOS machines and many Unixes had an rwalld daemon, which listened for 'remote write all' messages. I (in Australia) had to contact my brother (in Germany) urgently one day. So I 'rwall'd the machine that I knew he used most often. To great success.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

I discovered and did the same thing (except I didn't put my name they just found where I was seated, poor school, very regimented computer lab). I got suspended. Guess we get different treatment for curiosity after all.