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Back Orifice (1998)

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Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#121
post #57

We used Back Orifice on a co-worker’s machine in a call center I worked at. While he was working we would open and close his CD-ROM drive randomly. Restart his machine. All the while we’re four seats down just cackling and he’s turning redder and redder as his machine does all these weird things while he’s trying to work.

I worked a call center over xmas season one year. During training they had us call each other and place fake orders for practice. I got call from the "hot chick" in the group, took down her info and asked if could call the number later. She responded in the positive. I never followed up 'cause I already had a GF. But hey, pranking people is fun too!

Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#123
When I was in highschool in the late 90’s, I was really into exploring networks and systems I wasn’t supposed to be in, but it was always about learning technology for me. I found this tool to be extremely creepy.

I discovered that my local ISP had the finger port open on their dialup gateway. Since usernames were first letter + last name I could look up any ip addresses I found in my local firewall logs basically by name.

I saw someone trying to connect to this port and knew exactly who was scanning for this and eventually found a honeypot listener that would allow attackers to connect, but let you control the data sent back. I can’t remember exactly what I sent, but I called out the attacker by name when he connected to my machine and he never scanned me again

Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#124

Back in the good old days we were sending this to random ICQ users saying something like "hey I'm a game developer and made this game, would you like to try it?". I'm not very proud of that tbh.

What you could do was embedding the BO exe inside another exe disguised as a jpg picture. When executed it would extract and run BO in the background and also display a jpg. ICQ conveniently didn't display the end of long filenames, so you could send it as "xyz.jpg[20spaces].exe" and it would seem like you just shared a picture. Worked like a charm the one time I tested this technique on an unsuspecting friend during a LAN party.

Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#125
post #91
post #73

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 d…

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 th…

Burning a 0-day exploit on changing people's backgrounds or color scheme would be a good bit in 2021

Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#126
post #57

We used Back Orifice on a co-worker’s machine in a call center I worked at. While he was working we would open and close his CD-ROM drive randomly. Restart his machine. All the while we’re four seats down just cackling and he’s turning redder and redder as his machine does all these weird things while he’s trying to work.

now-a-days i just put a wireless keyboard mouse adapter and giggle as i move their mouse around and type on their screen.

At university our computer labs were full of SGI Indy's. For most people at the time it was the first computer they'd used with a webcam.

Every student could log into all the machines.... and access the webcam remotely.

Lots of messages to people telling them things like to stop picking their nose when they were sitting somewhere they thought nobody could see them.

People learned to use the privacy shields on the cams very quickly.

Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#127
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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 ar…

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 TIL: a Harvard student named Paul Graham was quite close to Robert Morris. It is a small world.

Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#128
BO was the only malware I got infected with on Windows. Back in 99, some colleague had sent me an executable to try out (supposed to be the portscan tool he developed), it did nothing so he said "hmm ok". Later, my mouse started becoming erratic, I started to make typos. I finally figured out what's going on when the CD drive ejected itself and I shut off the computer. He later admitted messing around.

Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

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 TIL: a Harvard student named Paul Graham was quite close to Robert Morris. It is a small world.

you might be interested in seeing the founders of yc https://www.ycombinator.com/people/

Re: Back Orifice (1998)

#130

Back in the good old days we were sending this to random ICQ users saying something like "hey I'm a game developer and made this game, would you like to try it?". I'm not very proud of that tbh.

Apparently people still do this on Discord.
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