Re: What evil things have you done in the past?

["BLuRry" <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

Terry Olsen wrote:
> The hacker handle thread is pretty interesting. But what evil things has
> anyone done? I can tell you about a couple of mine...

Apple nerdiness:
In elementary school, we had several computer games they wanted us to
play.  I had a good 2-3 year head-start on Apple basic and knew what
ctrl-c would do to anything that dared to show the ] prompt during
boot.  So I would modify some of the game disks to increase your odds
of shooting bison (oregon trail) or make every day sunny (lemonaid
stand).

But my favorite trick was to replace the HELLO program with one that
printed out a normal basic prompt and pretended to act normal (easy way
-> for x=1 to 5:print "]";: input a$: next x) and after a few lines of
input start printing "?SYNTAX ERROR" a few times and then move on to
newer, funnier error messages of a more insulting nature, finally
exiting with the final command "NEW" -- on top of all that I modified
the program listing so that you couldn't see what the program really
was.

Of course, this sort of thing went on for years in some way or another.
 My computer lab teachers kept an eye on me.  There was a certain
middle school teacher I had tormented who did not realize that my
little sister was related to me.  I was in high school and long gone --
he thought he was safe and rid of me.  So I scanned a pic of me and
snuck it onto her disk so that it would pop up while he was grading her
simple-looking program (I also taught her many tricks, which she used
to just get A's without paying much attention in class, though she
really did not need my help).  Aparently, it really surprised him.  And
left him very scared of my little sister for some reason >:-D

Phunny Phreaking:
It just so turns out that the local phone exchange where you could
replace all 498 numbers with 234 and the regular last 4 digits.  So,
for example, pick up the handset on a phone with the number 498-1111
and dial 234-1111.  An odd tone played after that, which meant it
worked.  Flash the hook and then hang up.  The phone exchange would
call back immediately.  Hang up after that and it would stop, but if
you instead flash the hook and hang up and it would call again, etc.

So there was this pay phone in the courtyard of my middle school...
And a lot of friends had numbers that started with 498...  And some
local businesses...  And the neighborhood pool...  Oh man I had so much
fun with that one!!! >:-D

Anti-coprorate activity:
Hmm... let's see... there was another time I got sick and tired of a
certain evil chain store (lousy service, crappy prices, I was a bored
teenager with a car, etc), so I swapped the guts of a brand new 28.8
external zoom modem with the 9600 baud zoom modem I already owned.  The
case and boards were nearly identical.  And so I returned the modem
saying it was not connecting at fast speeds.  Wow.  That was totally
evil.  Not as evil as other folks I knew who were getting free ram
upgrades in a similar way, but still pretty evil.