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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)

#261

Post by lotsofpulp »

zmix wrote: post #257
mleonhard wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met someone many years ago who bragged that they did this with sales tax. They purchased expensive items at Costco in Oregon, paying 0% sales tax, and then returned those items in Washington and received a full refund plus 10% sales tax. This was the first time I met a person who appeared normal but lacked social mores against fraud.

Don't they need to show up the purchase recipt/bill? Wouldn't the store's location be identified on that?

Costco accepts returns without receipts. I assume their system can look up all items purchased with your Costco membership.

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

#262

Post by con »

Was an exchange student at a High School in Michigan (I’m German): Hacked the local school network to access the cafeteria system and changed my friend’s photo to Tux (Linux mascot). Would also have been able to change the credit of each student - but mentioned to the sys-admins which then challenged me to brute force their Admin password. I successfully did that and they offered me an internship. I learned a lot over the half year that I worked with them, switched from Windows to Debian (on a Mac! I wasn’t allowed to be paid, but they gifted me an iBook before I left).

While I was there I also setup a cgi (web) proxy on a host in Germany, called it “cproxy” and shared it with friends in the high school. At the end of my year, I think half the school was using it to circumvent the schools accept/reject list for web browsing. I kept it running and two years later my parents received a call from the FBI, that they wanted to have a word with me (I was back in Germany at that point). Supposedly someone used it for fraud on eBay. I remember how I had to tell my teacher in (German) school that I had to keep my cellphone with me because the FBI was about to call :-) Fun times! Really glad that the school in Michigan was so supportive and helped me keep my hacker spirit!

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

#263

Post by wholinator2 »

Nition wrote: post #229
nicbou wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a good way to explain my discomfort with online tracking. Machines categorising you based on your behaviour, without your knowledge nor your consent. It's not so bad when it serves you ads (unless it sells alcohol to alcoholics), but there's no telling what similar algorithms would say about you in the hands of a rogue government. They can find vulnerable people, people who hate certain people [0], peop…

There's a beautiful song by Vienna Teng called The Hymn of Acxiom[1][2] that covers this nicely. It's in the form of a hymn sung by the data collecting machine itself. It starts off like a message of love and reassurance, but the reassurance unravels as it goes on, until finally we reach the double meaning of it all: "Embrace you for all you’re/your worth" Somebody hears you You know that inside Someone is learning t…

This is one of the strangest and most amazing art pieces I've experienced. Perfectly captures our time, both in technology used to produce the song and the meaning of all the words

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

#265

Post by andrewflnr »

Nition wrote: post #229
nicbou wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a good way to explain my discomfort with online tracking. Machines categorising you based on your behaviour, without your knowledge nor your consent. It's not so bad when it serves you ads (unless it sells alcohol to alcoholics), but there's no telling what similar algorithms would say about you in the hands of a rogue government. They can find vulnerable people, people who hate certain people [0], peop…

There's a beautiful song by Vienna Teng called The Hymn of Acxiom[1][2] that covers this nicely. It's in the form of a hymn sung by the data collecting machine itself. It starts off like a message of love and reassurance, but the reassurance unravels as it goes on, until finally we reach the double meaning of it all: "Embrace you for all you’re/your worth" Somebody hears you You know that inside Someone is learning t…

The performance itself is haunting as well, all a capella harmony. Give it a listen.

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

#266

Post by pdpi »

jpmoral wrote: post #149
lokimedes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had sysadmin rights on my school’s Windows servers after some very simple social engineering (for a 10 year old). The real irony was that I was called to the principal’s office on multiple occasions because I seemed to be able to fix things on the network that the local “admin” (e.g. music teacher) couldn’t. Fun times indeed. It completely ruined my respect for authority figures. Which in retrospect has been the mo…

>It completely ruined my respect for authority figures. It looks like they realised they were out of their depth and found someone who could help. Were they wrong to trust you? Edit: I may have misunderstood your post. Did you mean: A. The principal and the music teacher asked you to help out a few times because they knew you were skilled B. You were always the first suspect when anything went wrong I understood it a…

There's the educational, constructive "Hey lokimedes I hear you're pretty good with this computer stuff want to come and help me while I solve a problem?", then there's the not so educational and not so constructive "Hey lokimedes, I hear you're pretty good at this, want to solve this problem for us?".

The "admin" person calling you for the former? Pretty cool. The principal calling you to their office for the latter? It really does say weird things about authority figures to a kid who's paying attention, especially when mixed with the cluelessness about security.

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

#267

Post by andrewflnr »

wyre wrote: post #52
belval wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may know him but I did not, so I erred on the safe side and added the "if there is any truth to it" as it's a much safer default to assume that everything I read on the Internet is possibly made up.

I don’t think assuming stories as untruthful is using good faith. I think this line of thinking heavily contributes to this post-truth society we live in; if everything online is a lie that leaves the individual to create their own truth from the lies leading to this idea of post-truth. Obviously there is more nuance than this because websites need views for ad revenue and people like lying online for imaginary inter…

Whether it's "using good faith" is frankly beside the point. Default skepticism is the only way to not get fooled over and over again. People demonstrably don't need a reason to lie beyond craving notoriety; no one on Reddit gets paid for the tall tales they tell. This doesn't mean you just get to make up your own truth either. Rather, it means that finding the truth is very difficult and sometimes you need to explicitly maintain agnosticism, you know, like GP did.

To lean on "good faith" is just another way to lose your nerve and fling yourself on the mercy of blind belief.

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

#268

Post by [deleted] »

wholinator2 wrote: post #263
Nition wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a beautiful song by Vienna Teng called The Hymn of Acxiom[1][2] that covers this nicely. It's in the form of a hymn sung by the data collecting machine itself. It starts off like a message of love and reassurance, but the reassurance unravels as it goes on, until finally we reach the double meaning of it all: "Embrace you for all you’re/your worth" Somebody hears you You know that inside Someone is learning t…

This is one of the strangest and most amazing art pieces I've experienced. Perfectly captures our time, both in technology used to produce the song and the meaning of all the words

[deleted]

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

#270

Post by kortilla »

bikingbismuth wrote: post #255
giantg2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I tried to do the right thing but ultimately it ends up being their responsibility to handle it when the customer is standing right in front of them showing their loss of revenue." I bought some lions mane mushrooms from a grocery store, which cost $10-12 per lbs. The cashier rang them up as "regular" (button) mushrooms at $2 per lbs. I pointed out the mistake and she tried to correct it but chose the button mushroo…

I was in dire need of an Cat 5 cable a few years ago and went to Walmart to get one. Until this point I had always made my own cables, so when I saw the price ($40ish) I was floored. Unfortunately, I had to buy it anyway. As I was checking out I had that cable and a small bag of beef jerky. The cashier wasn’t paying attention and didn’t engage with me at all. She scanned the beef jerky and moved the cable across the…

You just stole it. I don’t see how this is even a grey area. Can you walk me through the thinking of “the cashier touched it, so now it’s mine?”
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