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Some weird random anecdote about Back Orifice 2000 (BO2k) that nobody asked for: We were goofing around in high school with this. Putting it on computers in sc

by neals 5y ago

Some weird random anecdote about Back Orifice 2000 (BO2k) that nobody asked for: We were goofing around in high school with this. Putting it on computers in school and messing around. We sent it over to a classmate. Her father was teachter and we figured she might open it on their home PC. (we were 14 at the time, by the way). Anyway, we made a fake hotmail address in the name of another classmate. These two people didn't share any classes and were not in eachother little social circle. We sent a couple of emails back and forth pretending to be the other guy but lost interest along the way and nothing happend. Now for the strange part; forward 18 years or so. I'm in the city, I run into the person who we were sending the messages to... with the person who we were pretending to be. Married and 3 children together. I'd like to think we brought them together in some strange way.

sarahjosh 5y ago
In AOL Instant Messenger when I was in middle school I bulk messaged a ton of accounts in some teen chat saying “Hi Sarah.” Most of them responded “I’m not Sarah” or similar but a few replied “who is this?” I said “It’s Josh.” Most of them said “I don’t know a Josh” but one of them said “Hi” like she knew a Josh. I then started talking to her and slowly got around to telling her that I had a crush on her. She actually seemed interested and she said she was going to come over to my house to talk about it. Don’t know how that ended but I hope it’s like your story.
- HeckFeck 5y ago
  I had many 'randoms' added on MSN messenger. Usually acquired through everyone inviting his complete contact list to one conversation. We used to discuss all and sundry back then. I was always slightly more nervous messaging the girls (obvious from their elaborate emoticon-saturated screen names). Curiously, one of my friends had a contact named 'korea@hotmail.com' who was always online but never replied. I sometimes wonder how many of them are doing now.
  - andai 5y ago
    > Usually acquired through everyone inviting his complete contact list to one conversation. Man, those were the days... Most of my contacts disappeared one by one (except for 2 which are my oldest friends now!), and it seems like that kind of atmosphere (just adding random people to chat) doesn't exist anywhere anymore, does it?
    - mulmboy 5y ago
      Smaller Discord servers are close
      - grioghar 5y ago
        +1 Some of my favorite random people I’ve met, I met playing in various games then gave them my Discord channel. Good, good times.
api 5y ago
I’m a bit older and when I was about 14 or 15 I got into assembly language DOS virus writing. This was in 1992 and 1993. It’s actually how I learned x86 ASM. I was involved with an old school hacking (sense 2) group called Phalcon/Skism. Did other fun stuff like “wardialing” with a program called ToneLoc. Anyway I wrote some viruses and dropped them in my high school computer lab. Several ended up getting loose on the local Cincinnati area BBS scene. One ended up in McAfee antivirus pretty quickly so I assume it spread further. There was basically zero security to stop such things back then. None of my viruses were designed to do real damage. They would print stupid messages or change your color scheme to funky colors, stuff like that. This was back when hacking (sense 2) and the computer underground was about a mix of pranks and exploration. It’s not like today where it’s all about serious crime and espionage and the penalties are also serious. It’s definitely not fun anymore.
- tylerscott 5y ago
  This reminds me of when I first discovered the Win32 API and used it to write some silly annoying apps in Borland C++ Builder. This was around 1998 and the worst I ever came up with was a persistent pop up that was difficult to remove due to some registry obfuscation. It had a single button that would open the CDROM tray. I put it on every computer in the lab. Good times. You’re right—it used to be playful to hack around. I miss those days.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - andi999 5y ago
    I just wanted to write it was a crime still back then and take the example of the first worm in 1988 : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm TIL: a Harvard student named Paul Graham was quite close to Robert Morris. It is a small world.
    - jlrubin 5y ago
      you might be interested in seeing the founders of yc https://www.ycombinator.com/people/ https://www.ycombinator.com/people/
dnsco 5y ago
This made my day.
dheera 5y ago
Back at MIT I had a script that would use "finger" to check who was logged into various machines on Athena clusters (MIT public computers) and occasionally send Zephyr messages to two adjacent people, one saying "look to your right" and another saying "look to your left" causing the two people to look at each other. I like to think a lot of inadvertent introductions and friendships might have been created by the script.
- omginternets 5y ago
  This is great. It’s like the nobler version of trolling.
- derac 5y ago
  This is wholesome hacking :)
xupybd 5y ago
Kris?
- grassmudhorse 5y ago
  Isolde?
rashthedude 5y ago
That is a beautiful anecdote

by neals 5y ago

sarahjosh 5y ago

In AOL Instant Messenger when I was in middle school I bulk messaged a ton of accounts in some teen chat saying “Hi Sarah.” Most of them responded “I’m not Sarah” or similar but a few replied “who is this?” I said “It’s Josh.” Most of them said “I don’t know a Josh” but one of them said “Hi” like she knew a Josh. I then started talking to her and slowly got around to telling her that I had a crush on her. She actually seemed interested and she said she was going to come over to my house to talk about it. Don’t know how that ended but I hope it’s like your story.

HeckFeck 5y ago
I had many 'randoms' added on MSN messenger. Usually acquired through everyone inviting his complete contact list to one conversation. We used to discuss all and sundry back then. I was always slightly more nervous messaging the girls (obvious from their elaborate emoticon-saturated screen names). Curiously, one of my friends had a contact named 'korea@hotmail.com' who was always online but never replied. I sometimes wonder how many of them are doing now.
- andai 5y ago
  > Usually acquired through everyone inviting his complete contact list to one conversation. Man, those were the days... Most of my contacts disappeared one by one (except for 2 which are my oldest friends now!), and it seems like that kind of atmosphere (just adding random people to chat) doesn't exist anywhere anymore, does it?
  - mulmboy 5y ago
    Smaller Discord servers are close
    - grioghar 5y ago
      +1 Some of my favorite random people I’ve met, I met playing in various games then gave them my Discord channel. Good, good times.

api 5y ago

I’m a bit older and when I was about 14 or 15 I got into assembly language DOS virus writing. This was in 1992 and 1993. It’s actually how I learned x86 ASM. I was involved with an old school hacking (sense 2) group called Phalcon/Skism. Did other fun stuff like “wardialing” with a program called ToneLoc. Anyway I wrote some viruses and dropped them in my high school computer lab. Several ended up getting loose on the local Cincinnati area BBS scene. One ended up in McAfee antivirus pretty quickly so I assume it spread further. There was basically zero security to stop such things back then. None of my viruses were designed to do real damage. They would print stupid messages or change your color scheme to funky colors, stuff like that. This was back when hacking (sense 2) and the computer underground was about a mix of pranks and exploration. It’s not like today where it’s all about serious crime and espionage and the penalties are also serious. It’s definitely not fun anymore.

tylerscott 5y ago
This reminds me of when I first discovered the Win32 API and used it to write some silly annoying apps in Borland C++ Builder. This was around 1998 and the worst I ever came up with was a persistent pop up that was difficult to remove due to some registry obfuscation. It had a single button that would open the CDROM tray. I put it on every computer in the lab. Good times. You’re right—it used to be playful to hack around. I miss those days.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- andi999 5y ago
  I just wanted to write it was a crime still back then and take the example of the first worm in 1988 : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm TIL: a Harvard student named Paul Graham was quite close to Robert Morris. It is a small world.
  - jlrubin 5y ago
    you might be interested in seeing the founders of yc https://www.ycombinator.com/people/ https://www.ycombinator.com/people/

dnsco 5y ago

This made my day.

dheera 5y ago

Back at MIT I had a script that would use "finger" to check who was logged into various machines on Athena clusters (MIT public computers) and occasionally send Zephyr messages to two adjacent people, one saying "look to your right" and another saying "look to your left" causing the two people to look at each other. I like to think a lot of inadvertent introductions and friendships might have been created by the script.

omginternets 5y ago
This is great. It’s like the nobler version of trolling.
derac 5y ago
This is wholesome hacking :)

xupybd 5y ago

Kris?

grassmudhorse 5y ago
Isolde?

rashthedude 5y ago

That is a beautiful anecdote