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The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

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Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#51

Post by rootusrootus »

spurgu wrote: post #17
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…

> Today it's all bullying and people are going insane over trolling but back then it was just part of the game. To be fair people were anonymous back then so trolling/bullying was easier to brush off.

Maybe for the general population. For those of us deep into the early Internet, it wasn't all that anonymous and a lot of people absolutely took it personally. In many ways, due to the significantly smaller group of people, it was a lot worse if you found yourself on the wrong side of things.

It just didn't make the news or get talked about in school because regular folks had no idea what was going on.

Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#52

Post by tptacek »

nefitty wrote: post #20
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…

This is a look at BoW's 1997 response to CBC going after hackers because of the actions of a script kiddie. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ypw59y/a-brief-look-back-...

For whatever it's worth, BoW in '97 is pretty different than BoW in '94.

Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#53

Post by MentallyRetired »

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!

Oh god, I hope not. My webarchived geocities from 1997 is cringy enough. I don't need to remember what I was saying on EFNet in 1993.

Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#54

Post by intothemild »

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…

Yep, I was on IRC from about '93 onwards... I remember it from the mid-nineties, I can't lock down specifics, but I remember the computer I was using at the time.

Can confirm the word "skid" too, and searching for any of these words is going to be problematic with all the bullshit l3375p33k.. So good luck using a regex or text search

but yeah holy shit winnuke/back orifice... wow that takes me back!

Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#55

Post by intothemild »

codetrotter wrote: post #45
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…

> it was essentially a sport to make your text as illegible as possible while still being able to understand each other : 50|27 0|= |\/|:55 7y|*:|\|6 1:|<3 7|-|:5 |3|_|7 47 73|-| 54|\/|3 7:|\/|3 : [)0|\|7 |\/|:55 :7 47 411

It's so dumb we used to think of this as a form of securing our chat...

At least mum and dad couldn't read it.

Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#56

Post by mindslight »

Since we're discussing nostalgia, what's still amazing to me is how l33t being on a T1 connection was, whereas these days that's like half the speed of crappy Verizon (9x) DSL.

On the other hand, going to eBay and searching Cisco 2501 is a bit depressing.

Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#57

Post by mindslight »

dusted wrote: post #24

I always thought script-kiddies were people who wrote in scripting languages rather than languages that had to be compiled.

Interestingly enough, the term also applied to people who downloaded/compiled/ran exploits written in C. The distinction was primarily about the effort put in to understand and learn, as opposed to copying example commands.

Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#58

Post by TeMPOraL »

spurgu wrote: post #17
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…

> Today it's all bullying and people are going insane over trolling but back then it was just part of the game. To be fair people were anonymous back then so trolling/bullying was easier to brush off.

Depends. IME on IRC people usually were pseudonymous, not anonymous, and built reputations around their handles - reputations which sometimes were as important (or for us youngsters more important) than meatspace one.

Re: The Origin of ‘Script Kiddie’

#59

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

spurgu wrote: post #17
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…

> Today it's all bullying and people are going insane over trolling but back then it was just part of the game. To be fair people were anonymous back then so trolling/bullying was easier to brush off.

I've been on the internet since 1995, FWIW. My understanding of "trolling" at the time just meant deliberately saying stupid or obviously false stuff to get a rise out of people. It wasn't malicious, just a form of sport and when you realised you were on the receiving end often played along as a form of meta-trolling.

When I see "trolling" used to describe death threats or mocking someone's dead relatives on social media it just doesn't sit right with me. I guess language evolves but we already had perfectly good words like "harassment" and "bullying" to describe these activities. It really takes away from the light-hearted fun and games that the word used to embody.

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