Saying “sup” with `net send`

I put `net send * Seniors2005` 200 times in a OPEN_ME.bat file and put it in our shared folder on the school network (it was buried deep in the Art department directories and was full of emulators and music and stuff.

My friend saw it and said "What's this?" I told him not to open it and of course he did so immediately.

This was a K-12 school, so every single lab, every single teachers computer all the way down to kindergarten got it.

When IT came to my friends machine, I fessed up and got in trouble. Banned from school computers for the rest of the year, all my teachers got a notice about it and I had more than one awkward conversation about what I did.

I too discovered the wild card net send in high school. I was at an assigned computer in class though and ended up with a stern talk from IT in which they claimed I caused all sorts of network issues. I thought it was hooey at the time but I was pretty sheepish about the whole thing.

I didn’t get in trouble and returned to class.

Later that year I installed VNC server on my friends workstation in the same class and used it to mess with him during class. We had a pretty good laugh. Another friend saw this happen, took the idea with some of his friends and a few days later installed VNC server on a bunch of computers throughout the building. My understanding is they generally caused a bunch of chaos, it was figured out who had done it, and the group were arrested(!). They ended up with community service if I recall.

I very thankfully was not pulled into this at all and found out about the whole thing later.

My high school also had a hidden copy of Unreal Tournament squirreled away on a network share somewhere, half of CS class always finished up with 20 minutes to spare to get in a few rounds. Good times.

Congrats on topping HN with your blog's first post, lol.

This is something I actually worry about future generations missing. My core love of computers came from being able to tamper with them. Being able to poke around in the operating system, figure out how to do neat things, etc.

Today, students are given either an iPad or a Chromebook, and generally locked into using some horrific privacy nightmare like Gmail, and have very little ability to actually experiment with computers.

I suppose this means we have better security, but people like me born more recently may not end up in the field because of it.

[dead]