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I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

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Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#111

Post by technothrasher »

torpid wrote: post #27

My FBI file was for hacking into my school district's AS/400 that handled my school's attendance and grading system. Somehow using a public IP address with no access restrictions allowed a clear telnet path in from home. Compounding username and passwords that were all the same for every employee. I didn't change a thing, just LOLed and told someone. Bad mistake. This was the late 90s. Oh well, 2 week suspension and…

> I learned my lesson to not talk about such things because their egoes were too fragile.

At my university in the early 90s I went the white hat route and had tons of fun. I managed to convince the computing center folks to give me a student job in the Unix group, and then spent the next three years hacking their systems and getting a pat on the back when I did it.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#112

Post by jacquesm »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #96
jacquesm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the dead dogs my experience in a first world country was quite similar. But for some reason I'm more impressed with you, probably because here in NL electronics were relatively easy to come by because people were throwing away older generating electronics with great regularity to buy something newer. Whereas I would expect that in the 3rd world by the time you got your fingers on it it must have been techn…

Thank you. I found the same to be true, though. Most people don't know how to repair radios, or don't know anyone who can do it, so if it's anything more complex than a broken wire, it ended up in the trash. At least the cheap, handheld transistor radios did. Happily, everything was through-hole in the 70's so parts were easy to remove :-)

Yes, thank god for through hole parts, otherwise I don't think I ever would have made it this far. VLSI is killing poor kids' ability to get started with electronics.

What did you do your soldering with?

My first soldering iron(s) were simply screwdrivers in the stove :)

I even recycled the solder but it took a while to understand that you need flux as well as solder to make a good joint.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#114

Post by fuzzybear3965 »

belval wrote: post #89
SamBam wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it still sounds a bit hostile. I'd suggest "assuming it's true" as a nicer way of saying it.

Seeing the reply I'm getting, I think this is just the "English is my second language" showing on my side. I always assumed both expression were somewhat equivalent but clearly they aren't.

As a native speaker it appears to me that your audience is being a little uncharitable (they being, ironically, intellectually ungenerous toward you).

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#115

Post by angst_ridden »

A person I know studied in East Germany in the early 80s via a very limited exchange program. After the wall came down, she requested her Stasi file.

It was fascinating what was in the file - lots of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. For example, she was upset when the Challenger exploded, and this mystified the Stasi informers who had previously identified her as a pacifist (in their minds, the Shuttle was 100% military).

Similarly, she was trying to research what happened to a relative who had remained in Germany in the late 30s, and whether she had died of natural causes or been sent to the camps. The Stasi file was filled with speculations on the details of this "sleeper agent" with whom she was trying to establish contact.

All this to say that from the mindset of a spy, everything is spy-craft. Everyone's world-view shapes their interpretation of events and reality itself. Was the shuttle a military venture? Partly. Was it also a tool for science? Yup. But the functionaries who looked at her data in the heat of the cold war certainly couldn't see those distinctions.

For what it's worth, she was able to get her Stasi file, but has never been able to get a copy of her FBI file.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#117

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

jacquesm wrote: post #112
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I found the same to be true, though. Most people don't know how to repair radios, or don't know anyone who can do it, so if it's anything more complex than a broken wire, it ended up in the trash. At least the cheap, handheld transistor radios did. Happily, everything was through-hole in the 70's so parts were easy to remove :-)

Yes, thank god for through hole parts, otherwise I don't think I ever would have made it this far. VLSI is killing poor kids' ability to get started with electronics. What did you do your soldering with? My first soldering iron(s) were simply screwdrivers in the stove :) I even recycled the solder but it took a while to understand that you need flux as well as solder to make a good joint.

I don't think heating up a screwdriver ever occurred to me!

My first soldering iron was huge! I don't remember who gave it to me, but it was clearly not for electronics. It had a small wooden handle and a tip that looked like a large, bent flathead screwdriver. It could remove parts, but not much else. Ha! gotta love google. It looked something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Soldering-Handle-Chisel-Point-Copper/...

Thinking back, my grandfather was a carpenter and left a shop full of tools when he died, so it's possible that it used to be his.

I remember asking for a real soldering iron as a Christmas or birthday present and getting a low-wattage one since they didn't cost that much. Until then, everything was held together by wrapping wire onto leads.

The strange thing is that I remember having a small soldering iron, but I don't remember ever having actual solder.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#118

Post by cgriswald »

namrog84 wrote: post #38
torpid wrote: post #27

My FBI file was for hacking into my school district's AS/400 that handled my school's attendance and grading system. Somehow using a public IP address with no access restrictions allowed a clear telnet path in from home. Compounding username and passwords that were all the same for every employee. I didn't change a thing, just LOLed and told someone. Bad mistake. This was the late 90s. Oh well, 2 week suspension and…

> I learned my lesson to not talk about such things I like how you shared how you learned lesson to not share mischievous activities with people in the same post you then go and share more things you haven't been caught for. This is going on your permanent school record! /s That's great. I know even as of recent of 2021 I've seen some places that had 0 security on things.

I think this is especially prevalent in schools. You'll see things like this even for things that aren't related to computers. When I was a kid, drugs in your locker were your drugs, even though breaking into the lockers was trivial and stashing drugs in other people's lockers was the way business was done.

I wouldn't have told the school of a theft I witnessed even if I knew there were cameras recording the entire thing. You're guilty unless you can prove someone else was more guilty and they're not really concerned about the truth of the matter so they're not trying to help you.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#119

Post by nostrademons »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #26
Bootvis wrote: post #2

Fun story but the fact that he totally lost touch with his childhood friend over something so silly makes me sad.

It makes me even more sad that we haven't remedied that sort of thing everywhere by giving children rights, including free association with others. In other words, parents cannot govern friends and romantic partners.

Runs into the same problem the majority of people have in capitalist democracies: rights are tied to economic ability. Kids are usually economically tied to their parents, so if a parent decides "Wups, gotta take a new job across the country" or even "I'm sorry, I don't have time to drive you there."

(As a side note - dumb parents tell their kids "No, you can't be friends with ...." Smart parents ensure their kids will never meet ... before their kids are even born, through zoning laws and buying a home in a good neighborhood. I wonder if housing policy advocates realize how much of housing policy is driven by ensuring that your kids associate with "the right" sort of people.)

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#120

Post by xtracto »

> This was just after local citizens of Japanese descent had been rounded up and taken away to concentration camps, though I was not aware of that at the time.

Now that was a piece of history I had never herd about:

https://www.britannica.com/event/Japanese-American-internmen...

Apparently Mexican concentration camps were not the US first throw at it.

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