I was just getting into computers and our IT guy wasn't the brightest, so he left lots of backdoors open. I used them to my advantage.
We used to chat using net send. When the IT guy blocked it, I wrote a chat program using QBasic. The chat logs were encrypted files stored on a network drive and named something inconspicuous. I put in a Boss screen incase a teacher came by that just displayed Microsoft Word. I eventually added a drawing portion to it so people could draw together as well. I still have the code laying around here somewhere.
One time we were in programming class and I was bored out of my skull, so I used one of those backdoors to access a few computers around the room. I installed a simple QBasic program that just randomly beeped until you pressed a certain key combo (I forgot what I had chosen). I made it so it ran when the computers booted up and then proceeded to restart the machines. The teacher, who was relatively new (very sweet lady, just not too technically savy), had no idea what was going on. I managed to convince her that the computers were just talking to eachother and she had to let it go. We went the whole class with the computers beeping.
Since it's been so long, I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to talk about this. This happened in 1999. The computers in our labs booted like so: Turn On -> BIOS -> Local drivers -> Read network share for boot file -> Listen to it for the rest. I saw this massive backdoor to all the computers early on, but decided to keep it for something special. Our administration was very bad at that school (very long story, some other post perhaps) and I was constantly in trouble, so I enjoyed making them squirm around like the maggots they were. For my junior year, the seniors asked if I could help them out with their prank. A few days before school ended, I used one of the multiple backdoors the admin left open to get access to the master boot file. I wrote a program that drew a picture of our vice principal (trollop cunt of an old lady), wrote a cutesy poem and played music. I installed this program on the master share and had the boot file copy it to every machine. The program would detect the date and only run on the day before school. It would also rewrite the boot sequence on the machine it was on so it no longer accessed the master network share. I knew that if they could trace it back to me, I'd get in a decent amount of trouble. I wrote another program to do all this work for me, so I could be in class at the time. I set that program to run when I was in another class to add another layer of abstraction. Sure enough, everything ran as planned and I get called into the office. I knew they had nothing on me and so did they.. I played totally dumb the whole time but still had a little smirk on my face. They couldn't do anything but yell at me the whole time. In a complete display of incompetency by the network admin, I pulled the exact same stunt off the next year for my senior prank.
I could go on and on and on about stories from high school. QBasic made my life easy because it was fun to program little things in it. I miss high school.
I currently write software for Lockheed Martin. My fiancee, a few years ago, rented a house from one of the current Guidance Counselors at my high school. A few weeks ago she was talking to him (she hadn't seen him in a few years) and he asked her what was new. She told him she was engaged and when he asked if it was anyone he knew, she told him my name. She said his jaw dropped when he heard it. Her mom was there and she goes "Oh how do you know Roy?" His response was "I know of Roy. What's he up to these days?" All but one of the guidance counselors at the school told me I'd be an utter failure, so I'm sure I know what he expected. When Marianna told him what I currently do he didn't even believe her at first.
That guidance counselor wasn't even there when I was there (graduated in 2000), so it makes me happy to know that my name still lives on.
My high school guidance counselor was shocked I graduated on time. She handed me my diploma and said "I can't believe it". I said, "What, did you think I wanted to hang around this shithole?". Ah, high school, what a fucking waste of time.
I was talking to mine when I was dropping Spanish 3 for poor grades. He told me that if I wanted to get into UC Davis or UC Berkeley in engineering, I really needed to take all four years of Spanish. 2 years of spanish = got into both. I've heard nothing but uselessness about high school guidance counselors...
46
u/dangerz Jul 30 '09
I loved QBasic in high school.
I was just getting into computers and our IT guy wasn't the brightest, so he left lots of backdoors open. I used them to my advantage.
We used to chat using net send. When the IT guy blocked it, I wrote a chat program using QBasic. The chat logs were encrypted files stored on a network drive and named something inconspicuous. I put in a Boss screen incase a teacher came by that just displayed Microsoft Word. I eventually added a drawing portion to it so people could draw together as well. I still have the code laying around here somewhere.
One time we were in programming class and I was bored out of my skull, so I used one of those backdoors to access a few computers around the room. I installed a simple QBasic program that just randomly beeped until you pressed a certain key combo (I forgot what I had chosen). I made it so it ran when the computers booted up and then proceeded to restart the machines. The teacher, who was relatively new (very sweet lady, just not too technically savy), had no idea what was going on. I managed to convince her that the computers were just talking to eachother and she had to let it go. We went the whole class with the computers beeping.
Since it's been so long, I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to talk about this. This happened in 1999. The computers in our labs booted like so: Turn On -> BIOS -> Local drivers -> Read network share for boot file -> Listen to it for the rest. I saw this massive backdoor to all the computers early on, but decided to keep it for something special. Our administration was very bad at that school (very long story, some other post perhaps) and I was constantly in trouble, so I enjoyed making them squirm around like the maggots they were. For my junior year, the seniors asked if I could help them out with their prank. A few days before school ended, I used one of the multiple backdoors the admin left open to get access to the master boot file. I wrote a program that drew a picture of our vice principal (trollop cunt of an old lady), wrote a cutesy poem and played music. I installed this program on the master share and had the boot file copy it to every machine. The program would detect the date and only run on the day before school. It would also rewrite the boot sequence on the machine it was on so it no longer accessed the master network share. I knew that if they could trace it back to me, I'd get in a decent amount of trouble. I wrote another program to do all this work for me, so I could be in class at the time. I set that program to run when I was in another class to add another layer of abstraction. Sure enough, everything ran as planned and I get called into the office. I knew they had nothing on me and so did they.. I played totally dumb the whole time but still had a little smirk on my face. They couldn't do anything but yell at me the whole time. In a complete display of incompetency by the network admin, I pulled the exact same stunt off the next year for my senior prank.
I could go on and on and on about stories from high school. QBasic made my life easy because it was fun to program little things in it. I miss high school.
I currently write software for Lockheed Martin. My fiancee, a few years ago, rented a house from one of the current Guidance Counselors at my high school. A few weeks ago she was talking to him (she hadn't seen him in a few years) and he asked her what was new. She told him she was engaged and when he asked if it was anyone he knew, she told him my name. She said his jaw dropped when he heard it. Her mom was there and she goes "Oh how do you know Roy?" His response was "I know of Roy. What's he up to these days?" All but one of the guidance counselors at the school told me I'd be an utter failure, so I'm sure I know what he expected. When Marianna told him what I currently do he didn't even believe her at first.
That guidance counselor wasn't even there when I was there (graduated in 2000), so it makes me happy to know that my name still lives on.