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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)

#271

Post by paxys »

angst_ridden wrote: post #115

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 1…

Anyone who is interested in this stuff should watch The Lives of Others (2006). It is unfathomable just how deeply entrenched Stasi was in every affair of citizens in East Germany. No organization in history has perhaps been as effective as them at spycraft, at least of their own people.

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

#272

Post by _9rq6 »

tester756 wrote: post #29

>After we left the form by her front door her parents somehow figured out who had done that and, when Bobby’s and my parents learned of this stunt they decreed that we would no longer play together. We followed that guidance for over 40 years. oh

Ah, I wanted to hear more of adventures of Les and Bobby.

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

#273

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

kortilla wrote: post #270
bikingbismuth wrote: post #255

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?”

I once made a purchase of multiple items where the cashier scanned the items, put them in a bag, charged me a total and I paid it. Only sometime later I found out they missed a $100 item.

Did I steal something? Did the cashier give me something for free? Who is responsible? What if I didn't notice the $100 charge absent from the bill? What if I was charged twice as much? What if I told the cashier and they did nothing?

What turns something into a crime, in your eyes?

I certainly don't think I stole anything, nor do I think OP stole anything.

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

#274

Post by totorovirus »

In early e-commerce era in korea, I remember a website storing refund balance into the browser cookies without verification which I told about it to my friend. My friend told that to his friend, and that one was bold enough to steal million dollar amount of goods using that bug, got eventually caught, however was not accused of anything because it was literally the first case of e-commerce related crime committed by teenager. The officials didn't take it seriously. Good old 00's.

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

#275

Post by kalleboo »

seabreezy wrote: post #210
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.

In grade school a class mate told me how to mail letters for free: print where the letter _should be sent_ in the return address, print anything for the apparent delivery address, apply no stamp, and drop in a public mail bin. The letter will be sent "back" to the return address because postage was not paid. When I got home later that day I excitedly shared with my parents the new hack I had learned and they told me…

In uni me and a friend who when to a university across the country (not US) did something similar - he mailed one letter to me once, then I'd replace the letter, cross out the address and write "return to sender". We'd do that over and over again. I think after 3 times the letter just got dropped and not delivered

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

#276

Post by conradev »

lokimedes wrote: post #46
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 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…

I found the password to my teacher's eBoard[1] in 4th grade (a five digit code) and started changing things as a practical joke. Then I started seeing more five digit codes just written on Post-it notes…

[1] https://www.eboard.com

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

#277

Post by [deleted] »

pvg wrote: post #234
hutzlibu wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Stasi was, especially in the end, exponentional invasive. Meaning they approached allmost anyone in any slightly important position and put pressure on them, to work with them to report on their collegues. (In the end, there were 90 000 of them, with a population of only 16 million). "you help us (and socialism) and we help your career - or you decline and good luck with your career, or the carrer of your partner…

you send one to prison for telling a bad joke about the government? For the most part, that sort of thing did not send people to prison. They'd have run out of prisons.

[deleted]

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

#278

Post by knodi123 »

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 cracked all the passwords in my MS-DOS based computer programming class by modifying the boot floppy. It was pointless since the assignments were easy and I had perfect grades in that class, and the only thing this allowed me to do was steal other peoples' homework. But eh, boredom....

I also figured out how to auto-crawl the networks of all the schools in our district, which, as a self 15 year old whose only experience was non-networked DOS, is still a proud accomplishment. The only things I found were a bunch of printer management, some office form templates, and a cool video game that was like sim-moonbase.

But then my teacher found the file in my home dir called passwords.txt, and I was busted. Oh well. Instead of an FBI file, I got a detention, and I had to teach him how to write-protect the boot floppies so no one else could do what I had. (he didn't need to know that you could reverse the write-protection with a piece of electrical tape)

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

#279

Post by chheplo »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #48
chheplo wrote: post #24

He was able to tinker with a radio at age of 10, in 1940. I had my first electronic at 19, in 2003, growing up in India. Today, almost anyone in the world can have access to the latest tech easily. Great minds were there and are everywhere in the world, they just didn't have access to resources. Think how fast the research monopoly of US is going to shrink.

Growing up in a Third-World country, I was tinkering with electronics at age 10 and built my first crystal radio at age 11 from junk parts. Dumpster-diving isn't hard as long as you don't mind the occasional dead dog.

My early years were in rural India, so even Motorcycles were rare to sight. However, I did my dumpster diving with Books and Magazines, and collected a lot of relics.

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

#280

Post by deburo »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #273
kortilla wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?”

I once made a purchase of multiple items where the cashier scanned the items, put them in a bag, charged me a total and I paid it. Only sometime later I found out they missed a $100 item. Did I steal something? Did the cashier give me something for free? Who is responsible? What if I didn't notice the $100 charge absent from the bill? What if I was charged twice as much? What if I told the cashier and they did nothin…

In smaller stores (fast food restaurants for sure), when the cash doesn’t balance, the employees pay the difference i think. does it hurt walmart or does it hurt the employees in that case?
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