The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

Post by BuildTheRobots » Mon, May 13, 2019, 12:20 PM UTC

LiveOverflow wrote: post #25

INTPenis wrote: post #9

The author might have had more luck grepping through irc logs from the 90s. If they exist. I was also born a bit too late but I was active on IRC during the last 3 years of the 90s and remember the term script kiddie being so much a part of the fabric of IRC that we had already started to type around it, so to speak. For example instead of saying script kiddies I'd just call myself a kid and it would be implied. Sort…

Do you know where I could get old IRC logs? I was looking for some but couldn't find any. I guess most of them are not archived anywhere? IRC logs of #hack etc. would be gold!

Post by Unknoob » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

phaemon wrote: post #33

Sendotsh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was absolutely in use on IRC in the mid 90s or earlier. We used it plenty to diss the kids pingflooding their school then saying they hacked it, or using winnuke or Back Orifice (manually, by installing the client themselves) on a friend. If you used a downloaded tool without any interest in how or why it worked, you were a script kiddy. There wasn’t really a definition or anything, you just knew.. the person was…

Searching should work as long as you're happy to kiboze with: grep -E '(5|s)((c|k)r?(i|1)(p)(t|7))?( ?)(k)(1|i)(d*)(y?)(i|1)?(e)?' ...or similar.

Post by codetrotter » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

Sendotsh wrote: post #32

INTPenis wrote: post #9

The author might have had more luck grepping through irc logs from the 90s. If they exist. I was also born a bit too late but I was active on IRC during the last 3 years of the 90s and remember the term script kiddie being so much a part of the fabric of IRC that we had already started to type around it, so to speak. For example instead of saying script kiddies I'd just call myself a kid and it would be implied. Sort…

It was absolutely in use on IRC in the mid 90s or earlier. We used it plenty to diss the kids pingflooding their school then saying they hacked it, or using winnuke or Back Orifice (manually, by installing the client themselves) on a friend. If you used a downloaded tool without any interest in how or why it worked, you were a script kiddy. There wasn’t really a definition or anything, you just knew.. the person was…

Post by h2odragon » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

Post by drawkbox » Mon, May 13, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #22

tptacek wrote: post #5

This is all pure navel gazing, of course, but: It goes at least back to Pluvius (in, amongst other places, BoW) in 1994, but I'm pretty sure he didn't come up with it either --- BoW itself was an ironic commentary on the whole scene, and wrote casually about "scripts" because everyone knew what that word meant. And so what's interesting isn't "script kiddie" --- "kiddie" has been an all-purpose pejorative since forev…

Zero days warez is absolutely where this measure of freshness comes from. The warez scene was closely linked to hacking because many software packages had licencing keys and other forms of DRM, and providing the software with the keygen, or crack was the norm. Good times. So exciting.