Where the term "Zero Day" comes from • Hacker News Board

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#31

Post by georgemcbay » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

clamprecht wrote: post #20

deftnerd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember using Toneloc during that time to wardial entire exchanges looking for dialup modems into servers. I wonder how many people I annoyed with getting phone calls in the middle of the night with my 14.4 modem screeching in their ear.

ToneLoc author here (mthreat), checking in, 20 years after the release of the last version. I didn't manage to avoid the federal prison part, but somehow ended up fine in the end. My path, roughly: BBSes -> saw WarGames -> wannabe hacker -> warez boards (Public Enemy) -> cracking games (learned x86 asm) -> hacking voicemail boxes -> wrote ToneLoc (learned C) -> real hacking -> COSMOS access -> physical hacking (burgl…

Similar journey here but without the burglary or prison.

BBSes (300 baud modem on a C64 hooked up to an old 13 inch TV) -> warez -> learned 6510/6502 assembly and started cracking -> hacking/wardialing as a means to get access to computers where I could do C programming with 'real' C compilers -> found my way onto the Internet/ARPAnet in the mid-80s -> moved to Amiga (continued cracking on 68k) a reasonably 'real' computer with DICE C (Thanks Matt Dillon!), etc -> software developer.

Got away from the illegal "hacking" when it started becoming a serious thing with serious consequences and I was no longer a minor, and out of the cracking/piracy thing when I was earning good money and could afford to buy things.

There are a few people on HN with similar stories that I know of from back in the +hack/#hack/#Amiga! irc days (my handles there varied but were often some variant of my name: gfm, geo, etc).

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#32

Post by mortenjorck » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:20 PM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #6

robertpohl wrote: post #2

I love the fact that this is no news to me. It brings back fun memories of my warez trading by mail and later BBS.

Yeah I miss those times - especially the fact that hacking/phreaking was seen as just a little 'naughty' and not worthy of hard time in a federal prison. I edited and re-edited this short post to take out stuff because I ended up going on a very serious reminiscing tangent. I'll post some of my thoughts here just to get them out of my system. Tag this as #ramblingsAfterMidnight Mostly I was active in the early to mid…

With the recent popularity of 20th-Century period dramas in the US, it seems like the market has never been more fertile for a film or series about the age of phreaking. It would be quite something to see a movie set around the time that Hackers came out that actually had well-researched, realistic hacking!

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#33

Post by ewest » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:30 PM UTC

Nicely written - the last paragraph draws the whole arc...from C preprocessor directives to Twitter hashtags; brings it together.

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#34

Post by clamprecht » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 6:43 PM UTC

makerops wrote: post #25

clamprecht wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ToneLoc author here (mthreat), checking in, 20 years after the release of the last version. I didn't manage to avoid the federal prison part, but somehow ended up fine in the end. My path, roughly: BBSes -> saw WarGames -> wannabe hacker -> warez boards (Public Enemy) -> cracking games (learned x86 asm) -> hacking voicemail boxes -> wrote ToneLoc (learned C) -> real hacking -> COSMOS access -> physical hacking (burgl…

I can't believe the author of ToneLoc posts here. This blows my mind! Brings up a lot of memories of great times, hanging out at the st. louis galleria food court for 2600 meetings.

I've even been banned here on HN :)

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#35

Post by iguana » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 8:09 PM UTC

clamprecht wrote: post #20

deftnerd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember using Toneloc during that time to wardial entire exchanges looking for dialup modems into servers. I wonder how many people I annoyed with getting phone calls in the middle of the night with my 14.4 modem screeching in their ear.

ToneLoc author here (mthreat), checking in, 20 years after the release of the last version. I didn't manage to avoid the federal prison part, but somehow ended up fine in the end. My path, roughly: BBSes -> saw WarGames -> wannabe hacker -> warez boards (Public Enemy) -> cracking games (learned x86 asm) -> hacking voicemail boxes -> wrote ToneLoc (learned C) -> real hacking -> COSMOS access -> physical hacking (burgl…

ToneLoc and BlueBeep were my introductions to computing. Thank you!

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#36

Post by sweis » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 8:10 PM UTC

clamprecht wrote: post #20

deftnerd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember using Toneloc during that time to wardial entire exchanges looking for dialup modems into servers. I wonder how many people I annoyed with getting phone calls in the middle of the night with my 14.4 modem screeching in their ear.

ToneLoc author here (mthreat), checking in, 20 years after the release of the last version. I didn't manage to avoid the federal prison part, but somehow ended up fine in the end. My path, roughly: BBSes -> saw WarGames -> wannabe hacker -> warez boards (Public Enemy) -> cracking games (learned x86 asm) -> hacking voicemail boxes -> wrote ToneLoc (learned C) -> real hacking -> COSMOS access -> physical hacking (burgl…

This is great to see. I remember ToneLoc when it came out.

Looking back, it was still the wild west. I remember finding dial-ins that had no logins at all and just dumped you to a shell.

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#37

Post by mmaunder » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #31

clamprecht wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ToneLoc author here (mthreat), checking in, 20 years after the release of the last version. I didn't manage to avoid the federal prison part, but somehow ended up fine in the end. My path, roughly: BBSes -> saw WarGames -> wannabe hacker -> warez boards (Public Enemy) -> cracking games (learned x86 asm) -> hacking voicemail boxes -> wrote ToneLoc (learned C) -> real hacking -> COSMOS access -> physical hacking (burgl…

Similar journey here but without the burglary or prison. BBSes (300 baud modem on a C64 hooked up to an old 13 inch TV) -> warez -> learned 6510/6502 assembly and started cracking -> hacking/wardialing as a means to get access to computers where I could do C programming with 'real' C compilers -> found my way onto the Internet/ARPAnet in the mid-80s -> moved to Amiga (continued cracking on 68k) a reasonably 'real' co…

Amiga. Respect! There was a time when it was clear that Amiga was going to win. And then it didn't.

I hung out on #phreak as pHaze.

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#38

Post by mmaunder » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 9:24 PM UTC

clamprecht wrote: post #34

makerops wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe the author of ToneLoc posts here. This blows my mind! Brings up a lot of memories of great times, hanging out at the st. louis galleria food court for 2600 meetings.

I've even been banned here on HN :)

mthreat verified.

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#39

Post by mmaunder » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 9:26 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #32

mmaunder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I miss those times - especially the fact that hacking/phreaking was seen as just a little 'naughty' and not worthy of hard time in a federal prison. I edited and re-edited this short post to take out stuff because I ended up going on a very serious reminiscing tangent. I'll post some of my thoughts here just to get them out of my system. Tag this as #ramblingsAfterMidnight Mostly I was active in the early to mid…

With the recent popularity of 20th-Century period dramas in the US, it seems like the market has never been more fertile for a film or series about the age of phreaking. It would be quite something to see a movie set around the time that Hackers came out that actually had well-researched, realistic hacking!

My agent's number is 1800...

I was going to say the market's too small, but based on defcon 2013's turnout it may actually not be that small.

Re: Where the term "Zero Day" comes from

#40

Post by aeberbach » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 10:52 PM UTC

user24 wrote: post #18

slipstream- wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know that. Do you have a source for this information?

I wonder if this is just a retelling of the myth(?) that leet speak originated in the practice of renaming files to avoid detection by sysadmins.

The only renaming to avoid detection I knew of was when fast modems were becoming a commoditized but FTP had started taking over as a transfer mechanism. Did you ever trawl through anonymous ftp servers looking for directories named ". ", ". .", "...", " ." etc.?