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The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

oldvcr.blogspot.com

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Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#201

Post by formerly_proven »

myself248 wrote: post #121

In high school, we had a Netware 3.12 environment, and the Guest account was enabled, albeit with very limited privileges. But for some reason, Guest could still use NET SEND, which popped up a little message in the bottom row of the destination machine's display. The whole district shared a T1 connection to the internet. Which was more than plenty for email, but as this world-wide-web thing started gaining traction,…

On Windows these messages are created using SMB IPC and you'd think this would mean the "sender" (user and host) are authenticated, but nope, the sender name is just a string field that can be anything. You'd also think the host would be based on something like the client IP and a reverse DNS lookup, what with the whole Active Directory thing, but nope, it's also just a string field that can be anything. And with SMB IPC you'd think only some privileged component can invoke it, but nope, any user can send those message popup commands to any machine pretending to be anyone on any other machine. I did not make wise use of this knowledge back then.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#202

Post by chungy »

gymbeaux wrote: post #142
myself248 wrote: post #121

In high school, we had a Netware 3.12 environment, and the Guest account was enabled, albeit with very limited privileges. But for some reason, Guest could still use NET SEND, which popped up a little message in the bottom row of the destination machine's display. The whole district shared a T1 connection to the internet. Which was more than plenty for email, but as this world-wide-web thing started gaining traction,…

In high school a friend figured out you could map any network drive to your desktop and access it (Windows XP), and since everyone in the entire school district had a username of {last name}{first initial}, you could gain read/write access to anyone’s network drive (essentially “home folder”). He used it to get test answers from teachers, I used it to create (empty) folders named “porn”, “porn 2”, et al. Anyway when…

> I mean was it really unauthorized access (they called it “hacking” of course) if his user account literally had permission to map network drives?

It may not pass as hacking, but it certainly was unauthorized. Network policy in software should reflect reality, but the source of authority comes from humans. Your friend literally was not authorized to access teachers' files, regardless of poor software configuration permitting the capability.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#203

Post by VirusNewbie »

myself248 wrote: post #121

In high school, we had a Netware 3.12 environment, and the Guest account was enabled, albeit with very limited privileges. But for some reason, Guest could still use NET SEND, which popped up a little message in the bottom row of the destination machine's display. The whole district shared a T1 connection to the internet. Which was more than plenty for email, but as this world-wide-web thing started gaining traction,…

In my high school, we put SETI at home on the image used to ghost all the PCs, and set it to run at night. Our high school had a few hundred PCs so we were climbing the leaderboard for a while until the District IT department found out and did not approve of using that much bandwidth...

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#205

Post by thwarted »

alsetmusic wrote: post #147
gymbeaux wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In high school a friend figured out you could map any network drive to your desktop and access it (Windows XP), and since everyone in the entire school district had a username of {last name}{first initial}, you could gain read/write access to anyone’s network drive (essentially “home folder”). He used it to get test answers from teachers, I used it to create (empty) folders named “porn”, “porn 2”, et al. Anyway when…

> I mean was it really unauthorized access (they called it “hacking” of course) if his user account literally had permission to map network drives? My expectation is that laws probably specify that gaining access that you know you’re not supposed to be able to get is probably illegal, but I get your point. Reminds me, however, of the pen-testers that got hired to infiltrate a court system and got harassed by a prosec…

If someone didn't question, or otherwise call out, the pentesters activity, that would have been a blemish against the security training of the org being pentested. This is why pentesters need a way to immediately escalate to the hiring party, to satisfy legit concerns over access and ensure those claiming to be pentesters legitimately are.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#206

Post by geocrasher »

Early 90's, 386/16's in the computer lab in high school. I wasn't taking any of the classes but had access to the computers at lunch. I was teaching myself Borland Turbo C++ at home. Guess what these computers had installed?

Growing bored with playing Gorilla.bas, I wrote a program that let out a several second long, I backed up autoexec.bat as autoexec.old, wrote a new autoexec that ran my program, deleted it, and then restored the original autoexec.bat to cover its tracks.

We weren't present when it did its thing, but the next day I was informed that if it happened again, I'd lose access, and that was it. No "hacking" accusations or anything.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#209

Post by mvdtnz »

glenstein wrote: post #36

I think the real value in this writeup up of a clever little prank is the way the author/prankster could map out the social reactions and how the spirit in which the prank was received cascades through a whole entire organization in ways that hinge on little cues, little things about who knows who and whether you're physically present before a particular impression crystallizes in people's minds. It's just such a gre…

I think people who perform these kinds of pranks vastly overestimate the positive reactions they get.

FTA,

> Having sent this out, I fielded a few anxious calls, who laughed uproariously when they realized, and I reset their printers manually afterwards. The people who knew me, knew I was a practical joker, took note of the date, and sent approving replies.

I doubt a single person "laughed uproariously". Most often they probably rolled their eyes and gave a sympathy chuckle. The people who knew he was a "practical joker" understood how much of this guy's ego was tied to his inaner sense of humor and laughed along to get out of the conversation with him.

Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

#210

Post by urbandw311er »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #118

Waaay back in the mists of time, when behemoths roamed the plains and cell phones smaller than bricks had yet to be invented, I was an undergraduate student in Physics at Imperial College, London. The physics teaching lab had a large number of BBC Micro computers, these were the precursor to the ARM RiscOS ones made by Acorn, and physics departments loved them because (a) they were full of ports that could be attache…

That’s a pretty wild ride. Thanks for sharing. You must have been absolutely terrified when it began again the second time !
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