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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)

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were smarter, I probably would have learned about proxy servers. I was tantalizingly close as is. I had set up port forwarding on our home router and a dyndns account to access my (Linux) desktop via ssh. I'm almost surprised it took me another few years to bump into SOCKS proxies. I already had 99% of the setup, just not the final step. Oh well I guess. Our school was Windows land as well. They blocked executio…

> They blocked execution of certain programs by some policy in Windows explorer in Windows XP. Funny thing was, if you knew the path to them, you could just point Firefox or Chrome at a file:// URI and run it out of your downloads directory. Oops. Microsoft security baffles me. You could run Windows Update in the browser (and also antiviruses using ActiveX). Who would think of making it possible to alter the OS… from…

I think those restrictions were really for ATMs and kiosks, but school administrators see them and decide to turn them on. If the user is able to open more than one application there is no hope in locking down functionality. Windows Help Viewer lets you open a web browser for example.

My school disabled right click in Windows Explorer, I'm still not sure why.

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

#322
post #257

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?

You need a membership to shop at Costco, so to return items you just use your membership card and they pull up your purchase history on the computer.

I would expect that history to include a price, but I guess it doesn't.

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

#323
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

And yet here we are, talking about it.

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

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?”

Who doesn't take off the Man now and again, though? Honesty doesn't get you very far these days.

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, okay then, case closed. In other news, North Korea says they're a democratic republic, so that's another thing we don't have to worry about.

The 4th Amendment

Doesn't mean shit without enforcement, which is conveniently also handled by the same cabal. I can't believe this basic fact has to still be argued in a tech focused forum despite the Snowden leaks.

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4th Amendment

Doesn't mean shit without enforcement, which is conveniently also handled by the same cabal. I can't believe this basic fact has to still be argued in a tech focused forum despite the Snowden leaks.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/court-finds-...

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a parent?

It doesn't matter whether or not I am. IF you agree, you do, and if not, you don't. I know some places have children's rights, which include freedom of association, especially as children get older. (Norway, for instance).

Not a parent then lol

Also, freedom of association doesn't refer to who a child can befriend or date. It refers to their ability to participate in causes that affect them, such as volunteering with NGOs.

What you're proposing is extreme by even Norway's standards.

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

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't mean shit without enforcement, which is conveniently also handled by the same cabal. I can't believe this basic fact has to still be argued in a tech focused forum despite the Snowden leaks.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/court-finds-...

A whole 6 years after the information was made public by a whistleblower who's still treated as a criminal. Surely you can see how little that means for constitutional enforcement?

All they have to do is mark everything as secret, aggressively pursue whistleblowers, and if they happen to get caught, just have the secret court admit guilt without consequences and let the public assume all is well again. Rinse and repeat.

After all, it isn't like they didn't know what they were doing, they explicitly ignored the restrictions placed on them by relying on secrecy and legal loopholes.

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

#329

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…

When I was 11 I social engineered the son of the computing teacher to get all the admin passwords. Then I fucked around with a whole bunch of stuff and showed a friend. When they figured out it'd been hacked they weren't sure who did it, but my buddy broke down very quickly and let them know lol. I was banned from the computer lab for the whole of my secondary school years. It didn't matter though, because when I was…

It's hard not to be critical of this headmaster, but I do have to question both the intelligence and the wisdom of someone who, in 1989, could not clearly see computers had no chance of becoming a "passing fad".

Picking up a copy of The Wall Street Journal at any point in the previous ten years could have clearly indicated that... and any school at which there's a "headmaster"... I would expect the WSJ is not a foreign entity to them.

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

#330

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…

Had a similar problem with feeling betrayed by authority figures when I was called in to be questioned about a hacking incident while in middle school just because I was good at VB in programming glass. Can really ruin a kid's confidence for years to come in case anyone in such position is reading this now.

Same thing happened to my friend in high school, there was someone causing some mischief with some of the school computers, and just because he was into BBSs and computers, he was a big suspect, but he was a good talker and was able to avoid any punishment.

He was a good friend because he kept silent about the fact that I was the one doing it ;)

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