59 ms·

I still remember when Windows computers beging hooked up to a dial up would be open on the internet. Lots of them had no admin password and all drives where sha

by leifg 5y ago

I still remember when Windows computers beging hooked up to a dial up would be open on the internet. Lots of them had no admin password and all drives where shared by default. So by just port scanning on the SMB port you’ll find a lot of computers and would have access to all their files.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
With a cable modem, you were on the same physical cable as your neighbors. If you looked at "Network Neighborhood", you would see your neighbors' computers and printers (unless they had turned off file and print sharing).
- thedougd 5y ago
  Ah yes, I had forgotten about this. Routers and access points weren't yet a consumer item.
- bluedino 5y ago
  Fire up Ettercap and read unencrypted AIM conversations...
  - chasd00 5y ago
    i did this in my dorm which was on a repeater at the time and no one cared/knew to watch for ethernet adapters in promiscuous mode. had all the aim/icq/hotmail accounts i could ever want.
- nicholasjarnold 5y ago
  Yes! Lots of fun could be had on old DOCSIS 1 networks, before everything was encrypted. Putting your NIC into promiscuous mode and using tcpdump or wireshark/ethereal/etc could yield a wealth of information about your neighbors. My favorite: If you could manage to have a capture running while someone (re)booted a cable modem you could easily grant yourself faster internet access. The process worked by capturing an example of the DOCSIS config file that the modem uses to provision itself on bootup. The modems would request these configs from a cable company TFTP server with a certain IP address. So if you got a neighbors config file and that neighbor paid for a higher service tier than you then you could fairly easily upgrade your internet speed by simply hosting that config file on a TFTP server in your local network using the same IP as the upstream _real_ TFTP server the cable company managed. Reboot your modem, watch it configure itself with your config file, profit! :) ..."good ole' days". I might be misremembering this slightly, but it really was fairly trivial to upgrade your service in those days.
arminiusreturns 5y ago
I stumbled on some crazy stuff back then when doing scans, one of the more notable was finding and ISP billing system with it's C drive shared over netbios (137/138). It was such the wild west days of the internet. Stuff like: I got in the local newpaper for recovering an important county server password that had been lost... cracks me up in retrospect.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
I may or may not have made somebody's shared-via-SMB-over-dialup printer print "FEED ME CHEESE" in huge figlet-generated letters. I may or may not have giggled maniacally when their IP address stopped returning PINGs immediately following. I may or may not have wished, for nearly 25 years, that I could have seen the face of the person who was sitting by that printer.
- nicholasjarnold 5y ago
  Haha! There was a very similar exploit that could be accomplished on (any?) HP printer connected to the network via TCP/IP using those Jetdirect cards. Essentially you could send some data over a raw socket connection that would cause the typical `READY` message on the printer's LCD to say whatever you want. It was a lot of fun to change READY to LOW ON CHEESE. IIRC it was a perl script that was floating around the net back then... Good times.
  - EvanAnderson 5y ago
    I enjoyed doing that, too. >smile< My go-to for PJL "exploits" like that was "INSERT COIN".
    - shrimp_emoji 5y ago
      >< as RP delimiters??? In all my years, I've never seen that before.
      - EvanAnderson 5y ago
        No idea where I picked it up. Looking back at old email I can see that I've been doing it since at least 2004. I'd guess longer but I didn't do a good job logging old forum posts, BBS messages, etc. I only really do >smile< that way. They look like dimples to me and it makes me smile.

by leifg 5y ago

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

With a cable modem, you were on the same physical cable as your neighbors. If you looked at "Network Neighborhood", you would see your neighbors' computers and printers (unless they had turned off file and print sharing).

thedougd 5y ago
Ah yes, I had forgotten about this. Routers and access points weren't yet a consumer item.
bluedino 5y ago
Fire up Ettercap and read unencrypted AIM conversations...
- chasd00 5y ago
  i did this in my dorm which was on a repeater at the time and no one cared/knew to watch for ethernet adapters in promiscuous mode. had all the aim/icq/hotmail accounts i could ever want.
nicholasjarnold 5y ago
Yes! Lots of fun could be had on old DOCSIS 1 networks, before everything was encrypted. Putting your NIC into promiscuous mode and using tcpdump or wireshark/ethereal/etc could yield a wealth of information about your neighbors. My favorite: If you could manage to have a capture running while someone (re)booted a cable modem you could easily grant yourself faster internet access. The process worked by capturing an example of the DOCSIS config file that the modem uses to provision itself on bootup. The modems would request these configs from a cable company TFTP server with a certain IP address. So if you got a neighbors config file and that neighbor paid for a higher service tier than you then you could fairly easily upgrade your internet speed by simply hosting that config file on a TFTP server in your local network using the same IP as the upstream _real_ TFTP server the cable company managed. Reboot your modem, watch it configure itself with your config file, profit! :) ..."good ole' days". I might be misremembering this slightly, but it really was fairly trivial to upgrade your service in those days.

arminiusreturns 5y ago

I stumbled on some crazy stuff back then when doing scans, one of the more notable was finding and ISP billing system with it's C drive shared over netbios (137/138). It was such the wild west days of the internet. Stuff like: I got in the local newpaper for recovering an important county server password that had been lost... cracks me up in retrospect.

EvanAnderson 5y ago

I may or may not have made somebody's shared-via-SMB-over-dialup printer print "FEED ME CHEESE" in huge figlet-generated letters. I may or may not have giggled maniacally when their IP address stopped returning PINGs immediately following. I may or may not have wished, for nearly 25 years, that I could have seen the face of the person who was sitting by that printer.

nicholasjarnold 5y ago
Haha! There was a very similar exploit that could be accomplished on (any?) HP printer connected to the network via TCP/IP using those Jetdirect cards. Essentially you could send some data over a raw socket connection that would cause the typical `READY` message on the printer's LCD to say whatever you want. It was a lot of fun to change READY to LOW ON CHEESE. IIRC it was a perl script that was floating around the net back then... Good times.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  I enjoyed doing that, too. >smile< My go-to for PJL "exploits" like that was "INSERT COIN".
  - shrimp_emoji 5y ago
    >< as RP delimiters??? In all my years, I've never seen that before.
    - EvanAnderson 5y ago
      No idea where I picked it up. Looking back at old email I can see that I've been doing it since at least 2004. I'd guess longer but I didn't do a good job logging old forum posts, BBS messages, etc. I only really do >smile< that way. They look like dimples to me and it makes me smile.