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The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

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

#211

Post by fc417fc802 »

wingspar wrote: post #163
linsomniac wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of "feeling bad for teaching someone"... I must have been in 5th grade and this other kid was talking about shorting out a power outlet. I said "What I'd do is unfold a couple of paperclips, stick them into a rubber eraser, then plug that into the outlet and twist it to get the paperclips to touch." A few days later the principal calls me in. "Did you tell him to do this?" "I didn't tell him to, we were just…

:) I’m legit trying to figure out who your calling the petty tyrant flexing their power: - The principal which let off with a warning - The other kid, popping circuit breakers - Or you, ‘corrupting’ other young minds :)

It refers to the principle, who didn't flex his power which came as a surprise. The other kid is a gremlin. GP was playing the clueless engineer type who forgets to give thought to who is asking the question and how the answer will be used.

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

#212

Post by fc417fc802 »

thwarted wrote: post #205
alsetmusic wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In this case IIRC they did have exactly that but were caught up in drama between different factions within the justice system. Unfortunately a few of the people involved behaved in bad faith and thus they got stuck in jail for a while.

The moral of the story, if there is one, is probably a cautionary tale about petty individuals prioritizing workplace politics over ethical integrity.

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

#213

Post by mortar »

Very tame in the scheme of things, but my go to prank was on a Windows machine, take a screenshot of the desktop with all of its icons, and then disable the icons. Doing it in a whole computer lab caught far more people double clicking in confusion than I expected.

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

#214

Post by miningape »

I became a lot engaged more in class after realising I could remotely shutdown the teacher's computer with a custom message.

In middle school our entire school network was running some strange windows server p2p setup. What this means is that any computer could issue commands across the network to other computers, purely by knowing the name of the port. Luckily, every ethernet "outlet" had a label stating the port's name. This made it stupidly simple to issue a `shutdown \M ` in the middle of class.

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

#215

Post by Full_Clark »

thwarted wrote: post #205
alsetmusic wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you listen to the episode you'll learn that such escalation did occur, and unfortunately the harrassment by local LEO did not cease.

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

#216

Post by ALLTaken »

miningape wrote: post #214

I became a lot engaged more in class after realising I could remotely shutdown the teacher's computer with a custom message. In middle school our entire school network was running some strange windows server p2p setup. What this means is that any computer could issue commands across the network to other computers, purely by knowing the name of the port. Luckily, every ethernet "outlet" had a label stating the port's…

Omg, I know I did this, but throw a double proxy. I thought a special education pupil howto remote shutdown and wrote a script. I told him they'd know it's him. So we scripted the Internet Explorer icon with a pre-exec command script, that basically did a network-scan for IPs and shutdown each one remotely. Poor fella sitting there didn't even know what's happening. Was a bully, but still. They interrogated him and he didn't even know what happened.

We sat there and saw every computer at the school turn off with a custom message. Except his computer. He really looked dumbfounded.. I get a smile when I think of it.. it wasn't anything evil or bad, but just fun.

Good 'ol times. He didn't get into any trouble, just disciplinary extra curricular work. Which I think was good for that bully anways.. he was lacking behind.

Also I remember accesing everyone $C drive and copy a counter-strike map of the school I was modeling into. So, the next time anyone went to a LAN-Party (THOSE were GOOD Times), everyone would see the school name as a map and nobody would know who made it. Obviously no violence intended. I just wanted to play in an environment that I spent most of my day and have fun afterwards at they way we could have some fun. Asking everyone to download it would've just led to trouble. Of course I heard of school shootings, but counter-strike was harmless. Those who did think of worse had this in mind anyways.

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

#217

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

It sucks when school administrators are needlessly punitive.

In my school, some jackass kid made a photocopy of a $20 bill, on a little mid-1990s HP Officejet in the library. Even in those days, they were programmed to make bad copies of US currency (I think they were enlarged and the color messed up). It was more of an innocent “woah look at this thing”, there was no intent or effort to glue it together and try to use it.

The assistant principal, who was a petty drunk who was uniquely unsuited for her job, flipped out and called the secret service. The kid was arrested & had a lot of issues over nothing.

It always stuck in my mind and accelerated the development of my contempt for petty tyrants who experience joy from the pain of others.

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

#218

Post by Spooky23 »

Suppafly wrote: post #129
romanhn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To this day, 22 years after I have last used Lotus Notes, it remains the worst software product I have had to work with. It tried to be everything and ended up being bad at all of it.

There are tons of things I miss about Notes email almost daily when I use Outlook. I supported Notes though, so I actually knew how to use search and agents and stuff that most of the people that whine about Notes never learned to use correctly. It's funny how all the companies that ditched Notes end up rewriting all the same applications in Sharepoint and then again in ServiceNow. The industry eats and regurgitates…

Totally agree.

I didn’t use notes much, but it was a platform ahead of its time, that thanks to IBM’s… IBM-ness was ignored and allowed to rot.

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

#219

Post by fc417fc802 »

refulgentis wrote: post #173
afro88 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 99.9% of people, the funny of the prank would only hit later. Ie, upon finding out it was a prank, and hearing about the "insert 5 cents" part that they probably didn't see with their own eyes. Plus the retraction, and 2nd retraction. And reactions of other staff who fell for it (and caused chaos) before 8:30. And then extra value upon retelling all of the above to others.

Someone relating that sequences of events to me as funny, especially if they said it was only funny after the pileup, would significantly adjust my prior as to dark triad characteristics in their psychology. "prank" = IT guy sent campus wide email saying some printers will now charge $0.05/page "that they probably didn't see with their own eyes" = they did not check physically very every printer on campus to verify n…

The fact that you don't find the ensuing chaos amusing has me wondering - do you find Bedlam DL3 entertaining?

Note that finding something amusing isn't necessarily related to whether or not you feel the perpetrator conducted himself appropriately.

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

#220

Post by dandelany »

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…

Is it still trespassing if the door was unlocked? Yes. Not sure why so many people have trouble applying the same principles of unauthorized access to computers.
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