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I was a little bastard in the late 90s, a script kiddie who executed anything I could find. Ran very obnoxious port scans against everything online. Eventually

I was a little bastard in the late 90s, a script kiddie who executed anything I could find. Ran very obnoxious port scans against everything online. Eventually I got a letter from my ISP and it was a thick binder with "netiquette". How to behave online. And a letter saying basically "we see everything you're doing, cut it out". They probably had complaints on the abuse address of my home IP, since I was a total moron.

locusofself 3y ago
I was totally the same. Got several phone calls and had my ISP service terminated when I was 13-14. Portscanned and war-dialed everything. Went to defcon when I was 16. I got my first job at a local ISP after the owner busted me for running "John the Ripper" password cracker against his system that I had a shell account on. As completely careless and reckless as I was, this kind of interest in hacking was my saving graces in terms of employability, because I failed out of highschool and never went to college. I work at a FAANG, miraculously.
- INTPenis 3y ago
  Same, had to repeat 10th grade, dropped out of 11th to get a job in IT and I've been living it up ever since. Not with any FAANG but then again I'm in Europe so we don't have such giants here. I work for the largest telco, partly government owned. (same ISP that sent me that letter;)
- sen 3y ago
  Same here. I was a relentless script kiddy who flunked out of grade 10 because of undiagnosed ASD, but having “tech skills” in the early 90s meant I had no problem finding random IT jobs and working up to a career in Gov IT. I remember hitting a point where there we no more local ISPs who would give us an account, so we’d go to the library and use BO to steal dial up accounts from random companies (always targeting local companies we hated at the time), which we’d keep in a txt file via an IRC fileserv and rotate through. Kept us online until we got better at not getting caught. Of course all that these days would get you put in prison but back then even when we got caught it was more of a “silly teenagers, don’t do that again or we’ll tell your parents… by the way, can you help fix our printer?”
  - locusofself 3y ago
    so true! and I'm glad I've finally reached the point in my career where I was will never have to fix a printer again... printers are the worst!
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  When were you hired to the FAANG? There used to be a culture of hiring hackers like you without a second thought, but sadly nowadays my cynical assumption is that most FAANG companies would be too corporate and buttoned-up to even consider it, at least not without needing to cut through some red tape about degree requirements and background checks.
  - locusofself 3y ago
    I resisted joining a big company for most of my career, which in hindsight I now somewhat regret (I thought I would be worked too hard, turns out working at startups and no-name companies is just as bad and typically pays less unless you are lucky). 3 years ago is a the real answer, far into my career (I'm 39). Pretty sure every single person I work closely with has a BA or Masters in computer science. I just have a lot of experience.
alexose 3y ago
Same here! I didn't learn my lesson, of course. The moment we upgraded to a DSL line, I port scanned even more machines, way faster, which led to Qwest shutting down our account, which was only re-enabled after several days worth of apologetic phone calls from my mom. Love ya, mom. Sorry I was an idiot.
- toast0 3y ago
  I managed to get in enough trouble with dial-up accounts (sorry, Undernet admins), that I knew not to mess around when I got cable internet. And then when I went away to college, I swore off IRC to stay out of trouble.
foobarian 3y ago
I was a little shit too. At one point I was playing a MUD from a university terminal, and had lag issues. I tracked down the slow node via traceroute, figured out the domain, and sent an angry email dripping with vitriol to admin@ berating their router, their infrastructure, etc. Actually got a reply back admonishing me for wasting resources :-). I wish I could track down the person involved today so I can apologize...
rootusrootus 3y ago
Same here. I got kicked off Teleport (a Portland ISP) a couple times. And then I got kicked off m2xenix by Randy because consequences didn't seem to deter me at that age.
azinman2 3y ago
I got kicked off Autobahn, an SF ISP, for doing _something_ (I don’t remember what) in their provided shell access. Simpler times of experimentation…
- rconti 3y ago
  I remember having to call Eskimo.com (Northwest ISP) tech support because I couldn't login to my shell account anymore. Turns out you shouldn't just copy+paste whatever you find online and shove it into your .cshrc.
  - bityard 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure I remember talking to people on IRC who used eskimo.com as their ISP. I don't know if the company is still operational, but their website sure is! https://www.eskimo.com https://www.eskimo.com
    - jelly 3y ago
      What a delightful website, the design is frozen in time. From the News section it appears they're still running - they posted an update on a router upgrade today https://www.eskimo.com/news/ https://www.eskimo.com/news/
      - rconti 3y ago
        Heh, neat. They were all Solaris (SunOS?) back in the day.
deckard1 3y ago
My dad got a letter from our ISP saying someone was "hacking" a certain site. He asked me about it and I sheepishly denied it. The site that reported me was the owner of hax0r.com (or .org? Cannot remember) and various other stupid vanity domains (used and leased, purposely mind you, for IRC bots and things like that). I think they were just mad because their shell account was passed around IRC like the most popular whore in town.
bityard 3y ago
Hopefully the statute of limitations has run out, but but when I was young and stupid, I "hacked" a local telephone box in the area to route a payphone line to my house. I grew up in a supremely rural area. We were not at all wealthy but still one of the few households that could even afford a computer. The computer came with a modem and I wanted to use it to connect to the world. The problem was that every phone call beyond a 1-mile radius or so counted as "long distance," so calling virtually anywhere cost a certain fixed rate per minute. We experimented with CompuServe and Prodigy at various points but the long distance charges alone made it not worthwhile. I eventually got to learning how physical phone lines worked and figured out that the same telephone box next to the road served both my house and the payphone for the store nearby. Long story short, I bridged the payphone's line to an unused pair at my house and started calling BBSes around the nation that way. I was always careful not to use it during the day, when someone might actually need to use the payphone. Of course, it only took a couple of months for the phone company to figure out something was amiss. They undid my handiwork and put a lock and seal on the box. They COULD have charged my parents with theft of service or at least delivered a stern warning but evidently they did not or I certainly would have gotten an earful over it. About a year later, the phone company brought in local dial-up Internet to the town. Footnote: I found a list of toll-free BBSes somewhere and there were HUNDREDS of numbers listed. I tried them all. Only maybe a dozen were actually free BBSes that you could create an account and log into, the rest were either dead, fax machines, or systems for some specific purpose. Aside from one fairly popular message board that eventually got shut down, it turns out there wasn't much to do on any of them.
- roygbiv2 3y ago
  >calling virtually anywhere cost a certain fixed rate per minute. This is how it worked in the UK. Calling anywhere cost per min and I racked up HUGE phone bills in the early days.
  - artofcode 3y ago
    I can still remember my dad's reaction when the first proper high phone bill came in... Oh boy...
pwrstick 3y ago
I love that this comment comes from someone who portmanteaud a Meyers Briggs personality type with the word “penis”. It so perfectly matches the tone that self reflection and understanding have taken place without losing the rebellious attitude that obviously got them in trouble in the first place!
29athrowaway 3y ago
Today shodan.io does the portscanning for you.
kthejoker2 3y ago
I violated our AOL TOS multiple times running scripts (I would spam IMs with my GeoCities site, I was so cool) and had to call in and pretend to be my dad on multiple occasions. Luckily they were more interested in a paying customer than actually enforcing their rules.

locusofself 3y ago

I was totally the same. Got several phone calls and had my ISP service terminated when I was 13-14. Portscanned and war-dialed everything. Went to defcon when I was 16. I got my first job at a local ISP after the owner busted me for running "John the Ripper" password cracker against his system that I had a shell account on. As completely careless and reckless as I was, this kind of interest in hacking was my saving graces in terms of employability, because I failed out of highschool and never went to college. I work at a FAANG, miraculously.

INTPenis 3y ago
Same, had to repeat 10th grade, dropped out of 11th to get a job in IT and I've been living it up ever since. Not with any FAANG but then again I'm in Europe so we don't have such giants here. I work for the largest telco, partly government owned. (same ISP that sent me that letter;)
sen 3y ago
Same here. I was a relentless script kiddy who flunked out of grade 10 because of undiagnosed ASD, but having “tech skills” in the early 90s meant I had no problem finding random IT jobs and working up to a career in Gov IT. I remember hitting a point where there we no more local ISPs who would give us an account, so we’d go to the library and use BO to steal dial up accounts from random companies (always targeting local companies we hated at the time), which we’d keep in a txt file via an IRC fileserv and rotate through. Kept us online until we got better at not getting caught. Of course all that these days would get you put in prison but back then even when we got caught it was more of a “silly teenagers, don’t do that again or we’ll tell your parents… by the way, can you help fix our printer?”
- locusofself 3y ago
  so true! and I'm glad I've finally reached the point in my career where I was will never have to fix a printer again... printers are the worst!
TechBro8615 3y ago
When were you hired to the FAANG? There used to be a culture of hiring hackers like you without a second thought, but sadly nowadays my cynical assumption is that most FAANG companies would be too corporate and buttoned-up to even consider it, at least not without needing to cut through some red tape about degree requirements and background checks.
- locusofself 3y ago
  I resisted joining a big company for most of my career, which in hindsight I now somewhat regret (I thought I would be worked too hard, turns out working at startups and no-name companies is just as bad and typically pays less unless you are lucky). 3 years ago is a the real answer, far into my career (I'm 39). Pretty sure every single person I work closely with has a BA or Masters in computer science. I just have a lot of experience.

alexose 3y ago

Same here! I didn't learn my lesson, of course. The moment we upgraded to a DSL line, I port scanned even more machines, way faster, which led to Qwest shutting down our account, which was only re-enabled after several days worth of apologetic phone calls from my mom. Love ya, mom. Sorry I was an idiot.

toast0 3y ago
I managed to get in enough trouble with dial-up accounts (sorry, Undernet admins), that I knew not to mess around when I got cable internet. And then when I went away to college, I swore off IRC to stay out of trouble.

foobarian 3y ago

I was a little shit too. At one point I was playing a MUD from a university terminal, and had lag issues. I tracked down the slow node via traceroute, figured out the domain, and sent an angry email dripping with vitriol to admin@ berating their router, their infrastructure, etc. Actually got a reply back admonishing me for wasting resources :-). I wish I could track down the person involved today so I can apologize...

rootusrootus 3y ago

Same here. I got kicked off Teleport (a Portland ISP) a couple times. And then I got kicked off m2xenix by Randy because consequences didn't seem to deter me at that age.

azinman2 3y ago

I got kicked off Autobahn, an SF ISP, for doing _something_ (I don’t remember what) in their provided shell access. Simpler times of experimentation…

rconti 3y ago
I remember having to call Eskimo.com (Northwest ISP) tech support because I couldn't login to my shell account anymore. Turns out you shouldn't just copy+paste whatever you find online and shove it into your .cshrc.
- bityard 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure I remember talking to people on IRC who used eskimo.com as their ISP. I don't know if the company is still operational, but their website sure is! https://www.eskimo.com https://www.eskimo.com
  - jelly 3y ago
    What a delightful website, the design is frozen in time. From the News section it appears they're still running - they posted an update on a router upgrade today https://www.eskimo.com/news/ https://www.eskimo.com/news/
    - rconti 3y ago
      Heh, neat. They were all Solaris (SunOS?) back in the day.

deckard1 3y ago

My dad got a letter from our ISP saying someone was "hacking" a certain site. He asked me about it and I sheepishly denied it. The site that reported me was the owner of hax0r.com (or .org? Cannot remember) and various other stupid vanity domains (used and leased, purposely mind you, for IRC bots and things like that). I think they were just mad because their shell account was passed around IRC like the most popular whore in town.

bityard 3y ago

Hopefully the statute of limitations has run out, but but when I was young and stupid, I "hacked" a local telephone box in the area to route a payphone line to my house. I grew up in a supremely rural area. We were not at all wealthy but still one of the few households that could even afford a computer. The computer came with a modem and I wanted to use it to connect to the world. The problem was that every phone call beyond a 1-mile radius or so counted as "long distance," so calling virtually anywhere cost a certain fixed rate per minute. We experimented with CompuServe and Prodigy at various points but the long distance charges alone made it not worthwhile. I eventually got to learning how physical phone lines worked and figured out that the same telephone box next to the road served both my house and the payphone for the store nearby. Long story short, I bridged the payphone's line to an unused pair at my house and started calling BBSes around the nation that way. I was always careful not to use it during the day, when someone might actually need to use the payphone. Of course, it only took a couple of months for the phone company to figure out something was amiss. They undid my handiwork and put a lock and seal on the box. They COULD have charged my parents with theft of service or at least delivered a stern warning but evidently they did not or I certainly would have gotten an earful over it. About a year later, the phone company brought in local dial-up Internet to the town. Footnote: I found a list of toll-free BBSes somewhere and there were HUNDREDS of numbers listed. I tried them all. Only maybe a dozen were actually free BBSes that you could create an account and log into, the rest were either dead, fax machines, or systems for some specific purpose. Aside from one fairly popular message board that eventually got shut down, it turns out there wasn't much to do on any of them.

roygbiv2 3y ago
>calling virtually anywhere cost a certain fixed rate per minute. This is how it worked in the UK. Calling anywhere cost per min and I racked up HUGE phone bills in the early days.
- artofcode 3y ago
  I can still remember my dad's reaction when the first proper high phone bill came in... Oh boy...

pwrstick 3y ago

I love that this comment comes from someone who portmanteaud a Meyers Briggs personality type with the word “penis”. It so perfectly matches the tone that self reflection and understanding have taken place without losing the rebellious attitude that obviously got them in trouble in the first place!

29athrowaway 3y ago

Today shodan.io does the portscanning for you.

kthejoker2 3y ago

I violated our AOL TOS multiple times running scripts (I would spam IMs with my GeoCities site, I was so cool) and had to call in and pretend to be my dad on multiple occasions. Luckily they were more interested in a paying customer than actually enforcing their rules.