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Back in 1999 when I was a freshman in university, my school had a server for students to host their websites on and use Pine for email. The server did not give
by mathrawka 14y ago
Back in 1999 when I was a freshman in university, my school had a server for students to host their websites on and use Pine for email. The server did not give shell access... but then there was a security hole in Pine that would allow you to run chsh. So I did that, and got shell access. I think the worst thing I did (other than running ls in a few directories) was use it to connect to IRC.
Since I wasn't really trying to hide anything, so one of the IT guys must have seen me with shell access and reported me. My punishment was having my ethernet turned off in my dorm room (even though the incident occurred in a computer lab while the dorm's ethernet was turned not ready for use yet). I appealed the decision and met with the Dean, and she said I was considered a threat to the school so I should be happy that my punishment wasn't worse.
Anyways, the rest of the year in the dorm was spent playing a cat and mouse game. I used my computer on my roommate's LAN port, so they ended up shutting off his ethernet as well.. I felt bad about that, especially since they refused to give him internet access for the rest of the year. So I ended up making a 50 foot ethernet cable and running it through the bathroom into another person's room (Two 2-person dorm rooms were connected by a common bathroom). That got shut off, so I bought a new LAN card (to get a new MAC address) and connected to another ethernet drop. I was able to get online for the rest of the year, but that sure left a sour taste in my mouth for my school.
Edit: I remember one close call... over a break (I was one of the few people in the dorm), water came out of the shower drain and flooded our rooms. I came back from spending the day out to see the Dean going into our room to inspect the damage, and I quickly had to hide my 50 foot cable that went through the bathroom.
- eru 14y agoWas MAC spoofing not doable in 1999?
- sliverstorm 14y agoEntirely believable. I don't have a timeline for you, but I do know that even only a few years ago it was not ubiquitously supported.
- jacquesm 14y agoSome guy told me that it depended on the card that you used, some cards apparently had eeproms that you could reprogram without too much trouble.
- nivla 14y agoand sadly it won't be in the future. New Intel-wifi cards have them blocked[1], their new drivers even go out of the way to modify/intercept Windows from doing it from the software side. Won't be long until other manufacturers follow suit. [1] http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-031081.htm http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-031081.htm
- bentcorner 14y agoSounds like we need a tor-like protocol for Ethernet.
- dthunt 14y agoDude. F. You. Intel.
- mathrawka 14y agoIt was, and I did use that to verify the new ethernet drop worked, but I would have to spoof it 24/7 for ~6 months. One slip meant losing the internet. So I thought the $10 on a LAN card was a good investment.
- arenaninja 14y agoIs MAC spoofing the same as changing your MAC address? Because I change it quite frequently, but I don't see it as "spoofing"