Sometimes, when walking around the terminal room, late at night you find that someone forgot to logoff before heading home (don't ask what I doing there, somehow my best hacking is done between 10pm and 3am ;-). What I usally do is just mail him a message from his own account, signed with my .sig file and log him off. But, if I happen to know the poor sod, HA HA !! He's not getting away that fast! UNIX if full of nice ways to puzzle your friends ;-) Here is one I *have* used but I stopped because some people don't get it and get *real* angry. I'll put comments in paranthesis and Cshell commands prefixed with "% ". (first make sure you know the guy) % whoami victim % finger victim Login name: victim In real life: The Victim Directory: /usr/victim Shell: /bin/csh On since Nov 4 23:33:27 on ttyp0 from here.DOMAIN No unread mail No plan (Now the dirty work ;-) % mkdir idontexist % mv .* * idontexist idontexist: inappropriate argument % mv idontexist "hint: cd hint*;mv .* * ..;cd ..;rmdir hint:*" (logout) % logout connection closed The result is that I have moved his whole account into a subdirectory whose name is "hint: " Does anyone else have UNIX (or other) puzzles to suggest? Disclaimer: Kids, don't try this at home. Heh heh heh... A long long time ago, on a node far far away (from pdpvax)... I worked in a VMS lab at a nameless college in New York. During a early version of VMS, they happened to leave the terminals 'unprotected', so anyone could (if they knew) do an ALLOCATE TTA1: if they wished... I wished. *grin* There was a definite order to the way the terminals got processed... The first terminal would be TTA0:, and it would continue from there. I wrote a simple little program (to demonstrate the severity of this problem to the administration) which ALLOCATEd the first few terminals that would connect, and would display the following message when a user tried to connect... ----- cut here ----- I can't open "LOGINOUT.EXE". Suddenly a sinister, wraithlike figure appears before you seeming to float in the air. In a low, sorrowful voice he says, "Alas, the very nature of the node has changed, and the system cannot be found. All must now pass away." Raising his oaken staff in farewell he fades into the spreading darkness. In his place appears a tastefully lettered sign reading: CONNECTION FAILURE The darkness becomes all encompassing, and your login fails. ----- cut here ----- It would then deallocate the terminal, and your login would work fine... The first user to login in the morning was usually one of the supervisors... The first time it happened, the poor fellow went absolutely white. *grin* Anyhow, that's the 'error message' portion of this, now for the 'login tricks' trick... I liked remapping the 'DIR*ECTORY' command under VMS to do a 'DIR/EXCLUDE=LOGIN.COM;32767', and such... Then I'd place a bit of code in the LOGIN.COM which displayed some asinine message about logging out, then would chain to 'LOGIN.COM;-1' which would chain to the users normal LOGIN.COM... I remapped a bunch of other commands too. Lots of fun, actually... I've also seen nasty things, like 'SET TERM/PASSALL', followed by displaying a bunch of messages that made it look like the users account was being deleted, followed by a 'DIR*ECTORY :== DIR/EXCLUDE=*.*' (or something like that... Perhaps DIR/SINCE=TOMORROW...) -- Morgan Schweers -- mrs@netcom.com P.S. How many folks recognize the error message above? -- mrs@netcom.com | Morgan Schweers | Happiness is the planet Earth in your ms@gnu.ai.mit.edu| These messages | rear view mirror. -- Jeff Glass Kilroy Balore | are not the +-------------------------------------- Freela | opinion of anyone.| I *AM* an AI. I'm not real... In article <1991Jul27.023327.7717@raven.alaska.edu> cdr@incoherent.isr.alaska.edu (Colin D Riparen) writes: [some very interesting things which I will just *have* to try out...] There are two things that come to mind immediately in this domain. Now, first, I must say that my fellow employees currently have a "truce" in that if we leave ourselves logged in and they catch us, the most they can do is a simple message. Before, it wasn't always the case.... (actually, three things) 1) This poor guy left himself logged in, so someone else aliased all the commands he usually uses to 'ls' and since there were no files in his directory, it wouldn't do anything. I think 'emacs' was aliased to 'logout'; that was safe 'cause this guy didn't use emacs and we ribbed him about it too. The person also chmod'd his .login and .cshrc files so he couldn't easily fix the problem (I, as one of the administrations of this machine - just a now-gone VAX 2000) almost chown'd it too, but decided to be nice. Trouble is, I don't think the guy ever noticed. 2) A co-worker of mine left himself logged in, and he was doing it frequently, so I took it upon myself to make sure it wouldn't happen again. So I fixed it so that when he logged in again, it would send mail to a mail reflector (other students) saying "I will not leave myself logged in ever again" about 100 times, then it erased all evidence of my tampering. Unfortunately, I did an 'rm ...' not an 'rm -f ...' and he had aliased rm to rm -i, so he saw the "I will not..." file. He didn't know it was mailed out, though... kept wondering why all of the other students had these big grins on their faces when he walked by... (we did tell him, eventually) 3) Another co-worker left himself logged in to a VAX 2000, so we had to do something. Subscribing them to a mailing list was already used before (once by anonymous mail, which created all sorts of problems in unsubscribing... ), so we decided to play with his X settings a bit. Eventually, we just set it so that if he touched the mouse, it would shoot across the screen. Either that or having the screensaver kick in after one second of inactivity. A slightly humorous side note to (3) is when we were experimenting with the mouse stuff, we didn't realize he had logged in to *another* VAX 2000 (a few feet away, being used by someone else who was on the phone at the time) from the login window, and whenever we tried to either open up a window or play with the mouse settings, it would appear on the other person's terminal. We were wondering why it wasn't working, the other guy was wondering where the heck these windows were coming from. I won't mention the sound wars with the NeXTs we had. Public sound ports can be fun and dangerous at the same time. ------ Mike Matthews, matthews@lewhoosh.umd.edu (NeXT)/matthews@umdd (bitnet) ------ Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. One that we did was rather devious, and it stayed for months until he found it (accidentally of course!). This person left himself logged in one evening. His login startup was modified so that every third time he logged in, 5 minutes after he logged in, his (vt100 compat) terminal was sent a "change char set" command, throwing it into the graphics character set. He didn't even realise that it was only happening to him either and thought nothing was amiss. /* <1991Jul27.023327.7717@raven.alaska.edu> by cdr@incoherent.isr.alaska.edu (Colin D Riparen) * Most every OS has a login file of some sort, and playing with them is the * standard way to get somebody who has forgotten to log off. Does anybody * have any good, harmless tricks for login files? * * By harmless, I mean "non-damaging to the sucker's files." I know that with * any such gag there is a chance that the victim will flip out and come after * me with an assault rifle. But what's life without a few risks? * * Here are some I know of, in Unix/csh terms. Try adding them to your own * .login if you get bored. * * 1. The basic gag * * logout * * Not much to it, but very annoying. I've done worse than this -- kill -9 $$ as the first thing in someone's .profile or .cshrc will do nicely. I usually reserved this for people who were being real assholes. Once I made it so that the prompt for the shell was equivalent to " 4.3 BSD UNIX (machine) login: " and aliased their login name to "exec login loginname"... Man, this guy got pissed at me. Can't imagine why. Can't quite figure how he figured out it was me. * * So, these are the ones I know. Have I missed out on any classics? Any * evil geniuses come up with better ones? * * I'll be hiding from the net.cops awaiting inspiration... * -- * cdr@incoherent.isr.alaska.edu | I talk to the trees, * ..beyond that address, you're on | that's why they put me away. * your own, cheechako. | - Eccles, an early New Age philosopher -- # greywolf@unisoft.com # "...to raise a signal means to turn the light on; ... Responding to a # signal means turning the light off (and, under System V, hoping the bulb # won't blow when it's next turned on)..." -- Dan Bernstein I have also been guilty of login tricks and other pranks. The other party had detected my password (not so difficult because it was similar to the password used on a DG/MV, which does store passwords in plaintext and everybody had access to the console). He had used it when I was away, not normally loggin in (that would show) but using ftp (he thought that would not show, but you see it with last). So on a certain day I renamed all his files. The new names were ^A, ^B etc. Gave him some surprise. Next step was renaming them to , , etc. (that is one space, two spaces etc.). Looked also nice. Next try. Each file was moved into its own directory, and the directories were nested. Gave his login shell (csh) some fits. I did some more along these lines. Next. I modified his .cshrc to show the following: if ( $?prompt ) then set tty=`tty` switch ($tty) case *p*: set prompt="\ \ 4.3 BSD UNIX (`hostname`)\ \ login: " breaksw default: set prompt="\ \ `hostname` ($tty:t)\ \ login: " breaksw endsw eval `echo alias $user login $user` endif (it is for 4.3 BSD, but I like this one; still using it when for some reasons I make csh my login shell). Finally I modified his .login such that he could not login unless he entered the line: I will not steal software sources anymore. (in Dutch) 10 times without typographical errors. He was erring of course, he had (through ftp) downloaded my sources for a Unix version of the (for Mac users) well known game of daleks. Those were not normally available. He had next copied those sources in a miscellaneous format (tarred, encripted, etc..) to various other machines. I found them all except one; he is still playing that version, and it contains a bug! But.... I did not merely remove all those versions. That is too mundane. No, they were replaced. Encrypted versions were replaced with random files so he would think he had forgotten the encryption key. Tarred versions were replaced with tarred versions of different source. Executables were replaced with different executables. My only problem was the version he had in an archive on the CDC running NOS/BE. I could not replace the version in that archive (it was password protected), but for some reasons I could rename it. That I did, replacing it with another archive (he never missed the other stuff in it). By what did I replace it? Another version of daleks. It's executable was equally long and it's tarfile was equally long. Also, SysV touch was helpful in setting correct creation dates. There was a difference. In normal versions you can do a random jump to the new place on the board, and after the jump you can be safe or immediately eaten. In his version, when he was the user, after a the program detected that the jump would be to a safe place it would do an additional jump (not visible to him). This would reduce his ability to enter the high score list. Imagine my surprise when he finally *did* enter the high score list, and imagine his surprise that the program displayed the text: Killed by copy protection. We still talk friendly with each other. Here's a real example of applied stupidity which I had to kill this morning. A chap had the following script file (called prime.c, strangely enough). ---- #! /bin/csh time prime.c ---- This was submitted as an at(1) job. He was unable to log in, as he'd exhausted his process quota. Of course, I forgot, and tried to run foreach i (`ps axu | grep USERNAME | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`) kill -KILL $i end (Real username deleted to protect the guilty). After about the third iteration, I remembered to kill -STOP $i, so that the running ones wouldn't fire up further copies before they got killed. Another killer I've seen runs along the lines: while (1) cp /usr/dict/words /tmp/`date` end or, similarly, while (1) mail root < /usr/dict/words end The number of times I've had to muck out /tmp and /usr/spool/mail ... 8-( From: scs@adam.mit.edu (Steve Summit) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug) In article , aldavi01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu (Arlie Davis) writes: > The "loop" above reminds me of a file of nasty preprocessor tricks to play > on unsuspecting friends/colleagues/enemies/etcs. A fairly remarkable trick to play along these lines is to place a file named README containing the text "README: No such file or directory" in someone's directory, or in some public place. This seems stupid and obvious, but there's something about it that tends to get even real wizards extremely baffled and exasperated until they finally figure it out. I think it works so well because the "No such file or directory" message is so familiar and ingrained that it is accepted and believed even when it doesn't make sense. I've seen people call up the recalcitrant file into a text editor and still be confused (even though the editor's error messages are normally quite distinguishable from the text being edited). The light usually dawns only when the victim resorts to od or some other hex dump to view the file and then says "Oh." Steve Summit scs@adam.mit.edu From: aldavi01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu (Arlie Davis) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: The funniest bug In <1992Sep16.165147.18412@searchtech.com> johnb@searchtech.com (John Baldwin) writes: [story about this loop:] > { > some code; > more code; > and still more code; > } while ( condition ); > Finally, he begs several of us to look at the thing. "I've got this > Do-While loop that just behaves insanely." The "loop" above reminds me of a file of nasty preprocessor tricks to play on unsuspecting friends/colleagues/enemies/etcs. Does anyone remember it, or know where to find it? I remember the instructions said to sneak it into the person's project header files, or their system's or or something else crucial. (This is especially easy and nasty on DOS boxes.) Here were a few: #define do /* "Hey, that loop *never* exits!" */ #define stdout stderr /* Works great until you try redirection. */ #define else if(rand()>RAND_MAX/2) #define time(xx) rand() #define extern static #define exit(xx) _exit(!xx) #define fclose() /* Leak leak leak!! */ #define close() #define malloc(xx) malloc(1024*((xx)+errno)) /* Ouch! *) #define free(xx) /* More leaking. */ #define fork() execl("/usr/local/games/nethack","nethack"),\ execl("/usr/local/games/x11netrek","x11netrek","-h","127.0.0.1") #define htons(xx) 42 #define ntohs(xx) (~(xx)) #define htonl(xx) (((xx) / 666) * rand()) /* Process is OK if it keeps opening files, else dies in 5 minutes. :) */ #define fopen(f,m) (signal(SIGALRM,SIG_DFL),alarm(300),fopen(f,m)) These aren't the originals, but they are in the spirit of them. :) Mail me any particularly nasty preprocessor tricks you've seen. -- lrwx------ 1 aldavi01 emacsstu 9 Jun 6 12:43 .signature -> /dev/null From: spc@pineal.sci.fau.edu (Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug) In article <1992Sep19.234011.5320@athena.mit.edu> scs@adam.mit.edu (Steve Summit) writes: >In article , aldavi01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu (Arlie Davis) writes: >> The "loop" above reminds me of a file of nasty preprocessor tricks to play >> on unsuspecting friends/colleagues/enemies/etcs. > >A fairly remarkable trick to play along these lines is to place >a file named README containing the text "README: No such file or >directory" in someone's directory, or in some public place. >This seems stupid and obvious, but there's something about it >that tends to get even real wizards extremely baffled and >exasperated until they finally figure it out. > Another trick I've done is to have my .plan file have the text: Bus error - core dumped I've caught not only the System Admin with that (What? Oh well, rm core. What? core: No such file or directory? Oh well) but also a couple of the Unix wizards in the department also! It's great to play with people's mind 8-) -spc (Core error - bus dumped) From: jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug) spc@pineal.sci.fau.edu (Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner) writes > Another trick I've done is to have my .plan file have the text: > > Bus error - core dumped A co-worker has his plan file end with [2] - Done /bin/rm -rf ~ & which tends to induce heart-attacks in the unwary... Jonathan H. From: bernie@metapro.DIALix.oz.au (Bernd Felsche) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug) In jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick) writes: >spc@pineal.sci.fau.edu (Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner) writes >> Another trick I've done is to have my .plan file have the text: >> >> Bus error - core dumped >A co-worker has his plan file end with >[2] - Done /bin/rm -rf ~ & Something as simple as ^@~%snm~NO CARRIER In your .plan or in your .sig can be very effective on systems which have dialup modems. NO CARRIER Disconnected -- +-----+ Bernd Felsche _--_|\ #include | | | | MetaPro Systems Pty Ltd / \ bernie@metapro.DIALix.oz.au | | | | 328 Albany Highway, X_.--._/ Fax: +61 9 472 3337 |m|p|s| Victoria Park, Western Australia 6100 v Phone: +61 9 362 9355 From: grnbrg@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Brian Greenberg) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug) In <1992Sep20.181012.6176@cybernet.cse.fau.edu> spc@pineal.sci.fau.edu (Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner) writes: >In article <1992Sep19.234011.5320@athena.mit.edu> scs@adam.mit.edu (Steve Summit) writes: > Another trick I've done is to have my .plan file have the text: >Bus error - core dumped > I've caught not only the System Admin with that (What? Oh well, rm core. >What? core: No such file or directory? Oh well) but also a couple of the >Unix wizards in the department also! > It's great to play with people's mind 8-) Another nasty trick along these lines is use the write(1) command. At the end of the conversation, type: EOF And hit enter. Then, after a few minutes, add the Segmentation fault. Core dumped. or [1] Done rm -rf ~& or some other nasty. Even better if you can see the terminal in question, and can 'coach' responses.... :-> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + grnbrg@ccu.umanitoba.ca + Computer Services + + Brian Greenberg + OLC Installation & Maintenance + +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From: d89-jhs@nada.kth.se (Jan Hrd af Segerstad) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug) In article , ld231782@LANCE.ColoState.Edu (L. Detweiler) writes: |> ... |> PC's have a lot of potential for scaring people pale because of the low |> security and low finesse of some of the users. Here is one way of hiding away a message that will appear when someone boot the PC. I think this one will be quite hard to find if you don't know where to look, or have some anti-virus-software using checksums or time- stamps. 1. Make a new directory from the root. Let's call it FOO. 2. Make a batchfile in FOO with a four-letter name, like XXXX.BAT XXXX.BAT: @ECHO OFF ECHO "" CALL \AUTOEXEC.BAT 3. Walk back to the root and execute "attrib -h FOO". The FOO- directory will now be somewhat hard to find. 4. Edit COMMAND.COM using DEBUG, find the place where the filename AUTOEXEC.BAT is stored and replace it with FOO\XXXX.BAT! At reboot this message will appear inbetween the messages from CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. I have forgotten where I first saw this idea. From: robm@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Rob McCool) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks malmberg@umsa8.umd.edu (Norwin Malmberg) writes: : : On the early versions of suntools (and, for all I know, the current version), : there is an escape sequence which "iconifies" the window. Since each : window is attached to a pseudo-terminal, it is possible to write the : escape sequence and iconify the window from another terminal. We had : one student convinced that his windows would disappear if he left the : machine unattended too long. We even went so far as to call him one : night, and then iconify his windows while he was talking to us on the : phone. Sun consoles are fun for this. There were two programs out a while back, called "melt" and "ferkel" which would, respectively using frame buffer lib calls, melt the entire screen slowly a la xmelt, or show a small man push your entire screen off the right hand side, leaving just blank space and this stupid little man sitting there. The funnier thing is that without root, you can't stop someone when he/she/other is doing this. Always good for a laugh.... : : >College was fun! : : I agree. Still is. : : Norwin Malmberg : malmberg@umsa.umd.edu -- Rob McCool, NCSA STG System Administrator robm@ncsa.uiuc.edu r-mccool@uiuc.edu robm@imsa.edu It was working ten minutes ago, I swear... From: evan@gauss.math.brown.edu (Evan M. Simpson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks Our Sun lab is great for this stuff... the way it's set up you can rlogin to any of them (they all carry the same accounts) and run xlock (Everyone uses X all the time). It will happily lock out the person sitting at the machine, and they can't do a damn thing unless they enter *your* password. Evan Simpson (evan@gauss.math.brown.edu ) From: scs@adam.mit.edu (Steve Summit) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug) In article , dm@stekt2.oulu.fi (Hannu Helminen) writes: > In article <1992Sep19.234011.5320@athena.mit.edu> scs@adam.mit.edu (Steve Summit) writes: >> A fairly remarkable trick to play along these lines is to place >> a file named README containing the text "README: No such file or >> directory" in someone's directory, or in some public place. > > I once accidentally did this to myself. I somehow managed to > redirect the "xxx: no such file or directory" message to file named > xxx. (Don't remember the details.. I think it was a script that was a > little buggy). I've done this to myself as well, and stumbled across the result of other people having done it to themselves, so it's apparently a common error. Perhaps someone can speculate on an easy-to-make typo which would give rise to this situation. Along the same lines, I once had a machine that took *forever* to boot, and I eventually traced it to the line cp /dev/null /etc/utmp in /etc/rc. (For the non-Unix-lovers out there, this is a command in the system startup file to copy the null device onto the file that records who's logged in, effectively clearing it.) Somehow, /dev/null had been replaced by a 400-block regular file (apparently /dev/null had been accidentally deleted, and the next command which tried to discard its output with something like program > /dev/null just happened to be run by the superuser). Nothing else that ran on this machine must have used /dev/null much, because the situation persisted for quite a while. Just long enough after fixing this for me to have forgotten the details, the disk crashed and had to be completely rebuilt from a very old backup, which just happened to have been made during the period when the 400-block "null" file had been in place, and I wondered why it was slow to boot again... Steve Summit scs@adam.mit.edu From: pv@gagme.chi.il.us (Paul Vader) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks johnm@metro (John McKirdy) writes: >I have occasionally changed their login scripts to set the prompt to > Do not forget to log out> >but found out some of the naive users hit by this didn't know what was >going on and couldn't change it back. It didn't work anyway, so now I >just walk by. > We have people at work who leave themselves logged in all day, without so much as a screen saver obscuring that they're doing. I just can't understand this behavior. If you're into harsh object lessons... One of my favorites is "PATH=." When someone asks what's wrong with the machine just type what they do and say "works fine for me". If you're feeling dangerous, type out some malicious command (such as rm -rf ~, or yes "bite my kneecaps" | tail -1000 | mail root) and very carefully (making sure they haven't been creative with stty) type the cancel key. This works quite nice for commands that don't feed back, so you can't tell by looking at the screen that the commands didn't actually happen. Creative aliases can be fun too ("why does Emacs boot up every time I try to get a directory?"). On the DOS side, try sticking the "warmboot" command at the end of autoexec.bat (make sure the echo is off). You can do roughly the same thing on a Mac with a Quickeys sequence to pull down the "restart" menu on startup. It's amusing that most people scurry frantically for boot disks and not just pull the plug until they know what's going on. PV -- Paul Vader Systems Analyst, semi-lurker, Rollerblader, pv@gagme.chi.il.us ex-Zen poet, FOAF, and bleeding-heart liberal From: jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks In article <1992Sep27.000122.9990@gagme.chi.il.us>, pv@gagme.chi.il.us (Paul Vader) writes: |> On the DOS side, try sticking the "warmboot" command at the end of |> autoexec.bat (make sure the echo is off). You can do roughly the same thing |> on a Mac with a Quickeys sequence to pull down the "restart" menu on |> startup. It's amusing that most people scurry frantically for boot disks and |> not just pull the plug until they know what's going on. PV This one may be common sense, but here goes... in MS-DOS... PROMPT=? cls I know. you already knew that certain dos interrupts won't print a question mark, and the one used for the prompt is one of them. This works great, because newbies tend to think that the machine is locked up because they get no response when they press return. When I was in school, several other departments required their students to take Programming I. This created problems since there were more people in that class than there were in our CS department. This resulted in a constantly full terminal room. I used to change the parity and baud rate on our vt220 terminals in our lab. When turned on, they responded with gibberish and the normal "idiot newbie" responded by trying to find another terminal. I never waited for a terminal after I started doing this. Jared Dahl From: adrian@milton.u.washington.edu (Adrian Mariano) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks In <1992Sep27.164747.16092@rchland.ibm.com> jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl) writes: >in MS-DOS... >PROMPT=? >cls >I know. you already knew that certain dos interrupts won't print >a question mark, and the one used for the prompt is one of them. Not in any version of MS-DOS I've ever used. No I/O method eats the '?' and the above simply gets '?' for the prompt. On someone's MS-DOS box, we once edited command.com to invoke our file instead of autoexec.bat. We gave the new file a name that would blend in -- we didn't hide the file, because we decided that an unexpected hidden file would jump out at the victims. We made sure that we didn't change the date on command.com when we edited it. (One of the victims recounted that he actually looked at the date when trying to figure out what was going on.) Our replacement of the autoexec.bat file contained something like @call \autoexec.bat @echo off subst d: c:\download assign c=d This has the effect of turning the c: drive into just the c:\download directory. Of course, the victims had all of their utilities in other directories. The victims started to understand what was going on when they ran a memory mapping program to list TSRs and noticed 'assign' in the list. The trick could be improved by eliminating this memory record. From: billaud@greco-prog.fr (Michel BILLAUD) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks (was: The funniest bug) Last month I wrote a csh-script. Switching constantly between MS-DOS ans UNIX, I started the script by: #!\bin\csh .... .... Just try to execute such a file ... -- Michel BILLAUD : billaud@geocub.greco-prog.fr Departement d'Informatique : phone W: 56.84.57.92 // 56.84.69.22 From: lstowell@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks In article <1992Oct02.003355.23812@bigbrd.agchem.redwater.iol.ca> p45dpmg@bigbrd.agchem.redwater.iol.ca (Peter Graw) writes: >Some of my favorite pranks: > >a program that would output a moving snake to a unix terminal with write >permission turned on, erasing text. 1st years would really freak. Even nicer with SVR4 is the ability to use priocntl to run your nasty little tricks at priorities ABOVE the scheduler's. Once a sufficiently nasty is started, just try to type in an appropriate kill command. REally nasty is to background it, THEN raise the priority. From: wmperry@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (William Michael Perry) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks >At the U of MN Sun lab a few days ago, I was startled to notice that an >extra window had popped up on my display.. It seems an X-windows novice >(xnovice?) had tried to log into my machine, and had instead opened an >xterm on my display pointed at his home directory. (It was a really ugly >blue-on-slightly-darker-blue, too, almost impossible to read, which makes >me think he hadn't found his .vtwmrc or .mwmrc yet..) anyway. Suggestions >from neighboring users included .tar-ing his entire home directory, then >nuking it and giving it back later, but the one that actually got >implemented was a line added to his .xinitrc: >xv -root -quit .backdrop & >where .backdrop was a nice n' juicy .gif from a.b.p.e. This happens all the time here at Indiana University. Another thing thats fun to do is make xeyes pop up (with no resize bars or close options) in a window as large as the screen at 0,0. Since it shows up on top, they can't get to their root windows. Unless they have a function key defined to f.destroy, they are a little screwed. Other fun things to do are: BTW: not sure if xterminate is a local script or not, but it kills all active xclients here.... 1) use gsh (group shell). Not sure if this is local or not, but what it does it rsh to a group of machines (usually one room full) and execute the same command on all of them. Never actually tried this, but it would be fun if the lab is full and you want people to leave real quick so you can grab a term. - gsh 'setenv DISPLAY `hostname`:0 ; xterminate -display `hostname`:0' 2) write a shell script (I'm no shell expert, but the general idea is this:) while true do who | egrep ' console' if ($status == 0) then setenv DISPLAY `hostname`:0 xterminate endif sleep 300; done Of course, this is all purely theoretical/rhetorical. :) -Bill Perry -- William M. Perry No! You can't have my opinions, mine mine all MINE! nyaaaaah! Article: 2784 of alt.folklore.computers Path: tridom!emory!wupost!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!seal!george From: george@seal.micro.umn.edu (Rogers George) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks Keywords: Sun X newbies Message-ID: <1992Oct4.021310.23148@news2.cis.umn.edu> Date: 4 Oct 92 02:13:10 GMT References: <15671@umd5.umd.edu> <19ub05INNehl@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU> Sender: news@news2.cis.umn.edu (Usenet News Administration) Organization: University of Minnesota CIS Lines: 28 Nntp-Posting-Host: seal.micro.umn.edu In article <19ub05INNehl@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU> evan@gauss.math.brown.edu (Evan M. Simpson) writes: > Our Sun lab is great for this stuff... the way it's set up you can rlogin >to any of them (they all carry the same accounts) and run xlock (Everyone uses >X all the time). It will happily lock out the person sitting at the machine, >and they can't do a damn thing unless they enter *your* password. > >College is great. >-- >Evan Simpson My .sig got stale, so I had to throw it out. >Brown U. Math Dept. >evan@gauss.math.brown.edu At the U of MN Sun lab a few days ago, I was startled to notice that an extra window had popped up on my display.. It seems an X-windows novice (xnovice?) had tried to log into my machine, and had instead opened an xterm on my display pointed at his home directory. (It was a really ugly blue-on-slightly-darker-blue, too, almost impossible to read, which makes me think he hadn't found his .vtwmrc or .mwmrc yet..) anyway. Suggestions from neighboring users included .tar-ing his entire home directory, then nuking it and giving it back later, but the one that actually got implemented was a line added to his .xinitrc: xv -root -quit .backdrop & where .backdrop was a nice n' juicy .gif from a.b.p.e. -Rogers (geor0007@student.tc.umn.edu) From: mollers.pad@sni.de (Josef Moellers) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks In <1992Oct6.135525.1@cc.curtin.edu.au> sbakerjr@cc.curtin.edu.au writes: >When someone leaves their VAX terminal without logging off (fatal mistake) >I find it hilarious to add the line to the front of thier login.com file... >$ LOGOFF Under UNIX try putting the following at the start of someone's .profile: echo "No home" sleep 5 exit I tried it! It took the person about half a day to find out. He called the sysadmin several times to tell him that his home directory was gone, whereupon the syadmin explained that it was still there with the right privileges. It did teach him the lesson, though! And no _real_ harm done! -- | Josef Moellers | c/o Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG | | USA: mollers.pad@sni-usa.com | Abt. STO-XS 113 | Riemekestrasse | | !USA: mollers.pad@sni.de | Phone: (+49) 5251 835124 | D-4790 Paderborn | From: dsiebert@icaen.uiowa.edu (Doug Siebert) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks I did something a bit more nasty, but still with no real harm done. I wrote a small C program which switched the names of all files in the user's home directory (except for .login, .cshrc, and other files needed for startup) So your directory would look the same to /bin/ls, but files aren't what you expect them to be, directories are files and all sorts of havoc ensues. Now the nasty thing about this is it does it EACH TIME the user logs in, undoing the 'damage' it did the last time. So one login it is messed up, the next it is normal. Best case, the scenario goes: Person logs in, realizes files are all messed up, logs out, goes to someone else for help Person logs in while other person watches, sees nothing is wrong, gets laughed at by the someone else. Logs out, goes back to where he was working. Repeat cycle until person goes to a sysadmin who will simply change to their directory and have a look, though a sysadmin who does su - can add to the fun! Not long after I wrote this, someone I know left his workstation logged in. So of course I seize the opportunity to use this program, and insert it into his .login, and leave the program in /tmp. I didn't attempt to hide my tracks at all, since I figured it was a joke. He logged in a day or two later, and thought his account had been broken into. He went to a sysadmin, and the sysadmin saw the program inserted in his .login, saw the file it called was owned by me, and restricted MY account for having hacked into his. Luckily another sysadmin who knows me was around when I did this in the first place, so nothing came of it, but it was enough hassle to keep me from doing this again :-) | Doug Siebert | "I don't have to take this abuse | | Internet: dsiebert@isca.uiowa.edu | from you - I've got hundreds of | | NeXTMail: dsiebert@chop.isca.uiowa.edu | people waiting in line to abuse | | ICBM: 41d 39m 55s N, 91d 30m 43s W | me!" Bill Murray, Ghostbusters | From: baldwin@carina.unm.edu (Chris Baldwin) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: dirty tricks In article twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes: >> rsh theirmachine stty erase t \> /dev/theirpty >Heh. Any reason you used 't', rather than something more ironically >appropriate, like 'x'? Sure, it is a lot harder to type 'stty' and change it back when you use 't'. I had a friend of mine that had this done to him so often that he has a shell script with no 's's, 't's or 'y's in its name that changes his erase character back to something rational. From: strtjkt@eskimo.com (StraitJacket) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Is there a word for this ? Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 19:22:22 GMT John William Chambless (chambles@whale.st.usm.edu) wrote: : What are some of the more creative tricks thgat have been played? : Let's hear 'em. AFC'ers?? Leaning over and typing: attrib o+rwe u-rwe . it took the sysadmin 30 minuites to track down the problem. -- Return: strtjkt@eskimo.com (StraitJacket) These opinions are mine, nobody else would claim them! DragonDance software... Look out Microsoft! Hi! I'm a .signature virus! Add me to your .signature and join in the fun! From: bscott@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Ben Scott) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Is there a word for this ? Date: Sun, 26 Dec 93 13:22:34 GMT John William Chambless wrote: >What are some of the more creative tricks thgat have been played? >Let's hear 'em. AFC'ers?? This is a constant problem around one office where I work. It's a pretty open (government) building and almost anyone could come in and wander around, yet lots of people just leave their terminals on. When I have the spare time (usually) and when the muse strikes me (not as often as it used to), I try to come up with some basic fun thing to do. Oftentimes, for new users, just hitting the "Hold" key on the keyboard will do the trick. Or changing their cursor so they know I was there, for the more experienced ones. But mail messages are fun too (there's only so much you can do in our Data General non-Unix menu-based shell). My latest trick is to create a private mailing list with the same name as the staff mailing list, but with only the users own name in it. Then mail out something embarrasing to it, which comes right back from "Staff" (or whatever name the list is), and then delete the private list. It's also fun to enter their calendar/scheduler (a rarely used function) and set an appointment for months or years in advance to remind them (via an audio beep and text message every 15 minutes all day long) of the anniversary of their carelessness. This kind of thing is tolerated (up to a point, of course) because security really is a problem around here. The local MIS department was only this year able to install an auto-logout program (over user objections) which logs people off after like an HOUR of inactivity... for all the good that does; the system goes down almost that often... . <<<>>> -- |Ben Scott, professional goof-off and consultant at The Raster Image, Denver.| |Internet: bscott@nyx.cs.du.edu, or call the Arvada 68K BBS at (303)424-6208.| |"Don't tug on that - you never know what ][ The Raster Image IS responsible | |it might be attached to." Buckaroo Banzai][for everything I say! |Amiga4000!| From: oren@pashosh.weizmann.ac.il (Ben-Kiki Oren) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1993 19:33:48 GMT John William Chambless wrote: >What are some of the more creative tricks thgat have been played? >Let's hear 'em. AFC'ers?? Well, this one is due to a friend of mine. He worked in a place which used Apollo workstations. Since this was in pre-X times, they had their own windowing system, which lacked any form of security. So naturally people wrote the obvious programs causing windows to fall through the bottom of other people's screens, drill holes in them (the windows, not the people :-), shove them aside by an animation of a rude construction worker etc. The really devilish one, due to my friend, played with the lookup table. It caused all color to fade... slowly and smoothly, by a few percent a minute. The user would lean closer and closer to the screen, trying to make out the text, until after an hour or so his nose would be practically glued to it. Since the transition was so gradual, most of the victims only realized that something was wrong when the screen was almost completely faded out, especially if the program was run at the late afternoon when the light outside was fading as well (). Oren. -- Life is tough and the hard ships are many. From: ab401@freenet.carleton.ca (Paul Tomblin) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Wanted: Best luser story Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 01:24:14 GMT richgr@netcom.com (Rich Greenberg) writes: >Along similar lines, my .plan file contains: > Segmentation fault, Core dumped. >And this has caught a few fingerers. And I used to have [2] Done rm -rf ~ at the end of mine. Caused a few paniced people. A guy I know named John, who had a userid of john, used to have one with a bunch of bogus John accounts, so in the middle of seeing all the other johns at that company, you'd see John F. Kennedy (last login: Nov???/ 1963, plan: to do after getting back from Dallas), Pope John-Paul (plan: To get a couple of nuns, and a 24 of beer, and ...), John Lennon, etc. -- Paul Tomblin - snide Canadian. Joel Furr can have my Vicki Robinson sig when he prys it from my cold, dead fingers. Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: richgr@netcom.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Wanted: Best luser story Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 23:16:52 GMT >To: johng@oce.orst.edu > (John A. Gregor) > > JA> Someday I might recount the fun he had with the 19 byte file that > JA> contained the characters: > JA> > JA> Permission denied.\n Along similar lines, my .plan file contains: Segmentation fault, Core dumped. And this has caught a few fingerers. "Somethings wrong. Every time I finger you, finger crashes. . ." -- Rich Greenberg Work: ETi Solutions, Oceanside & L.A. CA 310-348-7677 N6LRT TinselTown, USA Play: richgr@netcom.com 310-649-0238 GMT-8 I speak for myself and my dogs only. Canines: Chinook & Husky From: ajmy@festival.ed.ac.uk (A Myles) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Wanted: Best luser story Date: Wed, 12 Jan 1994 09:38:36 GMT richgr@netcom.com (Rich Greenberg) writes: >Along similar lines, my .plan file contains: > Segmentation fault, Core dumped. >And this has caught a few fingerers. As has... [1] Done rm [1] Done shutdown etc... Andy -- made in Taiwan From: ketil@ii.uib.no (Ketil M. Malde) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: 2 Feb 1994 16:59:21 GMT Or how about... cat > command mkdir YourFilesAreHere mv * YourFilesAreHere cd YourFilesAreHere source ./command ^D source command Always an interesting thing to see some of the limits of your system....or change them >:-) Or if you're in a good mood, and the recipient isn't too proficient with the shell, just touch \ I\ will\ always\ remember\ to\ log\ out\!\!\!\! (I have seen people have this kind of file for ages..) -- « Ketil Malde In real life: ketil@ii.uib.no » « Nuke The Whales! Pave The Earth! And Honk If You Love Unicorns! » Click Here Now! From: im14u2c@cegt201.bradley.edu (Joe Zbiciak) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: 2 Feb 1994 22:13:20 -0600 In ketil@ii.uib.no (Ketil M. Malde) writes: > touch \ I\ will\ always\ remember\ to\ log\ out\!\!\!\! >(I have seen people have this kind of file for ages..) Reminds me of this grad CS student I saw log in, and in his profile, someone had added a couple echo statements: "You know, a less charitable person would have erased your files. You really should logout when you leave a terminal." (a paraphrase, you get the idea.) But from what I could tell, the message had been there awhile, and the grad student took no notice.... Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d From: n9343176@waldorf.cc.wwu.edu (Jamie Heilman) Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: 3 Feb 94 06:28:22 GMT Unix: A fun little prank that my roommate and I have perfected is the art of blasting people with useless drivel. This can be done as long as the target has "mesg" set to "y". Step 1> watch someone log in to get thier user name and address... may not be neccessary but I have to do this when the target is someone I don't know. Step 2> simply type "man gcc | write " Step 3> Sit back and watch as fidgets in thier seat not knowing why an ungodly amounts of information dealing with the Gnu C compiler is flying accross thier screen. Anything can be piped to people through write so have fun with it. I just usually do the Gnu C compiler manual pages because its about 47 pages long, and when write is initially started the message "so and so requesting message session" or something to that effect so I like a file that is big enough to scroll off my address quickly so chances of a retaliation are little. enjoy. -- _______________________________________________________________________ | MONKEYWRENCH THE NEW WORLD ORDER | n9343176@henson.cc.wwu.edu | | -=J.B.=- | Leper | |______________________________________|________________________________| From: peter@melbourne.DIALix.oz.au (Peter Wemm) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: 3 Feb 1994 20:03:20 +0800 zorba@netcom.com (Harry Skelton) writes: >In article dm@stekt12.oulu.fi (Hannu Helminen) writes: >> >>There are a number of things one can do to a novice user who has >>left a unix machine without logging out. [....] >>At the end of your .plan, insert the single line >>You have new mail. >Usually I add a 'talk' broadcast from someone like the VP in the .plan. This >is sure to raise some hairs. >> Does anybody else in here >> feel the way I do? >Don't know. I feel with my hands. What do you feel with? My personal favourite is to create a ~/.exrc file for them containing :map! e ^[a (You have to type control-V then hit the escape key to get the ^[ ) Then, the poor unfortunate user usually switches amongst 3 or 4 terminals or peecee's and eventually cries for help... Why? Imagine the user types in insert mode: "Hello there", and it comes up on the screen as "Hllo thr", as if the 'e' key on the keyboard is broken... Along the same lines: :map! a e :map! e i :map! i o :map! o u :map! u a This is usually a good chuckle, but they catch on pretty quickly.. You have to make sure that they dont have an EXINIT environment variable, as that (on some systems) causes the ~/.exrc file to be ignored. So, is this evil enough? :-) -Peter >-- > Harry Skelton - 1848 Beaver Dam Lane - Marietta, Georgia - 30062 > 404-590-7100 or 800-366-8181 Work -- 404-578-8085 Home > 404-590-0355 - Personal Fax > My opinions are my own. Use at your own risk. -- Peter Wemm - NIC Handle: PW65 - The keeper of "NN" "My computer is better than your computer" - Anonymous (Overheard, shortly after the creation of the second computer....) From: sommers@gatwick.sgp.slb.com (Roger Sommers) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignor Date: 3 Feb 1994 17:42:38 GMT In article 94Feb2180227@gauk.ii.uib.no, ketil@ii.uib.no (Ketil M. Malde) writes: > >Or how about... > > cat > command > mkdir YourFilesAreHere > mv * YourFilesAreHere > cd YourFilesAreHere > source ./command > ^D > source command > >Always an interesting thing to see some of the limits >of your system....or change them >:-) > >Or if you're in a good mood, and the recipient isn't too >proficient with the shell, just > > touch \ I\ will\ always\ remember\ to\ log\ out\!\!\!\! > >(I have seen people have this kind of file for ages..) > You're too cruel ;o) On the subject of practical jokes, I remember the day before our final year project had to be handed in, _everyone_ was in the CS lab printing out their project reports on the Mac LaserWriter (some camped outside to be sure of a terminal - well almost). Anyhow, we were all trying to print at the same time, and when the Mac is busy printing it comes up with a dialogue box on the screen of whoever is waiting for the printer (ie everyone) telling them that Fred is printing data.dat and the printer status eg loading, printing, waiting etc etc. Every now and then the printer would report that it was "out of paper" or "paper tray removed" or something nice and friendly like that. This gave me an idea... The format of the text is something like "filename: name" but from the Chooser you can change your name field to be whatever you like. Just for a laugh I printed a file called: Warning and changed my "name" to be: LaserWriter (Fatal Error) printer overheating. Call engineer I still chuckle to this day when I think of the screams and panic as 60 people ran into the printer room to feel the side of the printer. I was the only one left but nobody saw me because I was crumpled up in a heap on the floor. Ho ho tee hee what fun 8o) ;o) -Rog. PS Has anyone ever fallen for a file containing the words "No such file or directory": % ls file % cat file No such file or directory % (I know it's not perfect but I did it to myself once by accident and it sure had me fooled [not hard that] ;-) From: Guest Account Newsgroups: rec.humor.d,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: Thu, 3 Feb 1994 19:14:35 -0500 im14u2c@cegt201.bradley.edu (Joe Zbiciak) writes: > ketil@ii.uib.no (Ketil M. Malde) writes: > > touch \ I\ will\ always\ remember\ to\ log\ out\!\!\!\! > > echo You know, a less charitable person would have erased your files. > echo You really should logout when you leave a terminal. % f Login Name TTY Idle kluless1 Inever Rememberto Logout co 1:22 % cat >> .login echo 'echo "sleep 1" >> .login' >> .login ^D % ^D -- Jon Ferro Einsprachigkeit ist heilbar From: wb8foz@netcom.com (David Lesher) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: Thu, 3 Feb 1994 19:54:43 GMT There was a blind student I knew taking a Fortran 1 course. I/O was a TSI braille terminal; about the size of an DECwriter II, but 20db more noise. {RAT A TATT RAT A TAT...} He had a session with a cute tutor at 3pm. (She, of course, did not read Braille.) This was ugly VM/CMS. I was across campus & used ?mesg? I think it is to send: Slowly his tongue caressed her heaving thighs, as it crept higher and higher. MORE! she cried, MORE..... and so forth. He was all upset. He would not tell her what all the output was saying, but she'd keep asking.... -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close...........(v)301 56 LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close)....kibo# 777............pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead..............vr....................20915-1433 From: samir@bashful.cc.utexas.edu (Samir Mahendra) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: 3 Feb 1994 15:41:45 -0600 In article , Ketil M. Malde wrote: >Or if you're in a good mood, and the recipient isn't too >proficient with the shell, just > > touch \ I\ will\ always\ remember\ to\ log\ out\!\!\!\! > >(I have seen people have this kind of file for ages..) On a similar note, how about: touch \* When they try to remove it..., well, the UNIX consultants will have a good laugh. "Er, did you leave yourself logged in recently?" -- Samir Mahendra |"English is just what we use to fill in samir@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu | between the equations." -David Politzer Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d From: dsiebert@icaen.uiowa.edu (Doug Siebert) Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 09:13:07 GMT newbold@bolero.camb.inmet.com (Chris Newbold) writes: >In article , >Hannu Helminen wrote: >... >>At the end of your .plan, insert the single line >>You have new mail. >Another good one that I use in my .plan (we have a Sun network): >Segmentation fault (core dumped) Much more annoying, if you have a Sun, to make .plan a link to /dev/zero. Try it and see :-) Doug Siebert || dsiebert@isca.uiowa.edu || Defeat Usenet spool grepping! Kibo Turkey Greece Macedonia Perl Watcom Mason Clinton Illuminati Fnord Hastur From: davidb@ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignor Date: 3 Feb 1994 23:16:18 GMT sommers@gatwick.sgp.slb.com (Roger Sommers) writes: > [edited] >The format of the text is something like "filename: name" >but from the Chooser you can change your name field to be whatever >you like. Just for a laugh I printed a file called: >Warning >and changed my "name" to be: >LaserWriter (Fatal Error) printer overheating. Call engineer >I still chuckle to this day when I think of the screams and panic as >60 people ran into the printer room to feel the side of the printer. >I was the only one left but nobody saw me because I was crumpled up >in a heap on the floor. Now _that's_ funny! One of my favorites has always been to find some hapless victim's DOS machine and change the volume label on C: to "corrupted". "Hello, support? There's something wrong with my hard disk. Whenever I type DIR it tells me that 'Volume in drive C: is corrupted'." >PS Has anyone ever fallen for a file containing the words >"No such file or directory": >% ls >file >% cat file >No such file or directory >% For a while, my .plan file contained simply: .plan: not found A co-worker's .plan contains the following: finger: Segmentation fault (core dumped) [1] + Done rm -rf * & And the best of all (I eventually dropped it because of irate complaints; it fooled more than a few people into disconnecting and re-dialing) was to close off my .signature with: Bob's Discount Modems: Every bit as good as the name brand, but ha{ fxxx{{{fx{{x~ NO CARRIER -- David Barts N5JRN UW Civil Engineering, FX-10 davidb@ce.washington.edu Seattle, WA 98195 -> Send Xanana a postcard! Finger the above address for details. <- From: gowen@allegro.cs.tufts.edu (Gregory Owen) Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 21:34:31 GMT gunnarh@dhhalden.no (WonderBoy) writes: > > A little off topic here, but in my early unix days I actually managed to > create a file called "*.*" (no fangs, of course). > > I have no idea how this could have happened, and hade forgotten all about > it. Does anybode know what could've caused this? > > (and yes, before you ask: I *did* 'rm *.*' :) ) Somehow, I suspect during an fsck, a gremlin created a file named ???? in my /etc directory on my home machine. I noticed it one day when doing random things as root. Without thinking too deeply about it, I typed "rm /etc/????". Its amazing how many important four-letter files exist in /etc -- init, halt, and so on. Sigh. As for *.*: If you tried to save *.* from emacs, it would do it. Creating \*.\*. Greg Owen { gowen@allegro.cs.tufts.edu, gowen@xis.xerox.com } 1.01 GCS/GO d++ p+ c++ l++ u++ e+ -m+ s++/- n- h !(f)? g+ -w+ t+ r-- y? "Put the staff in my hands; for I go to the Fenians, O cleric, to chaunt/ The war-songs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds..." From: lstowell@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: 4 Feb 1994 15:54:55 -0800 In article <2iuii9$8bd@wcap.centerline.com> jimf@centerline.com (Jim Frost) writes: > >You can have substantially more fun with X servers, though; being >annoying is easy -- it's being *creatively* annoying that's so much >fun, and you can be oh so much more creative with graphics. > I almost have a sneaky suspicion that the total lack of security on X is due to the mit student's fondness for games of this sort. The bell on xterms is another place to play, just set the $DISPLAY variable to the victim's terminal, set the bell freq, duration, loudness, and output ^G's and pauses. Starting multiple terminals can result in orchestral or canonical effects.. Not that I personally would EVER do anything like that.... Anyone got a list of frequency versus music scale notes? From: andreww@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Williams) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: 5 Feb 1994 22:07:23 +0800 ily@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Rob Freundlich) writes: >When I was in school, a friend and I would often find newbies >(sometimes oldbies too! hee hee hee) logged in. We'd invariably send >them a mail message from themselves saying something similar to the >above. We always signed them "the eggplant family" in fond (ack!) >reference to our least favorite sysadmin. Dunno why we called him the >eggplant, though. If I find clueless newbies harrassing me with 'write', or 'cat > /dev/ttyXX', (as they invariably do, I have found...) I usually try to make them sorry they had chosen me... My favourite trick is something like 'stty erase t > /dev/ttyXX', to force the 't' key to become the new 'erase' character for ttyXX (assuming they hadn't turned messages off, of course). The completely clueless don't know what is going on. The ones that aren't _try_ to type stty... This of course can be made much nastier- eg 'stty kill ^J', for example, or 'stty susp s'. If they persist long term, and learn how to turn messages off, I just leave a .rhost file in their account the next time they leave themselves logged in- pointing to my account on the same machine. It drives them bananas trying to work out why I can still fiddle with their erase characters... In actual fact, most of this occurs on the computer club machine here (because we get hordes of first years each year...) where I'm actually a superuser. Using 'su' just isn't... _sporting_, and besides, isn't nearly as much fun... (The BOFH might disagree with me here. :-) Andrew Williams, Physics, Uni of Western Australia. From: elf@ee.ryerson.ca (luis fernandes) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignor Date: 05 Feb 1994 16:04:05 GMT The following practical joke was the 1993 winner of the local "Wiley Coyote Deviously Cunning Practical Joke Award": Last summer, we had a co-op student working in our lab. His (unemployed) friends always called him on the phone, so if the phone rang it was very probably one of his friends. One night, after the 9-5'ers went home, we digitized the sound of the phone ringing (3 rings, the main-office picks it up if no one answers after that) using one of the Sun's mic.'s (set the record-volume to around 44 for best results :-). Since the phone was next to the workstation, it was impossible to distinguish between the phone ringing and the .au file playing. The next day, everytime this student stepped away from his workstation (to go to the washroom, etc.), his phone would mysteriously ring but no-one would be at the other end when he picked it up... -lf From: tsw@cypher.apple.com (Tom Watson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignorant computer users Date: Mon, 07 Feb 1994 21:32:47 -0800 I guess this is a good practical "joke" that was in reality harmless: We had a pdp11/44 running RSX-11M, and some WYSE-75 (VT100 clones) terminals. The Wyse terminals had a really neat feature that would allow you to "legend" the function keys on the last line of the terminal. This would be variable depending upon the state of the shift key. (can you see it coming...) I sent out a 'wall' type command that put nasty messages ("who knows where the phantom lurks", etc) in the SHIFTED portion of the message. Since the silly operating system used mostly one (upper) case nobody did a lot of shift key usage, but when they did, a message would appear. When it happened, the poor person would usually back off (remove hands) and the message would disappear. For some people this stunt would take hours to discover. It was lots of fun. I consider it on good taste, since it really was harmless. The machine itself was a good topic for folklore, it had only 1 Mb of main memory (which for a pdp-11 was quite a bit), and about 600+Mb of disk (not much by todays standards for about 15 or so people). Things have changed over 7 years... ------ Tom Watson Not much simpler!! tsw@cypher.apple.com From: Robert King Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.humor.d Subject: Re: practical jokes WAS: Re: blindly ignor Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 20:18:08 GMT In article <2is0k2$6ej@news.u.washington.edu> David W. Barts, davidb@ce.washington.edu writes: >Now _that's_ funny! One of my favorites has always been to find some >hapless victim's DOS machine and change the volume label on C: to >"corrupted". Ah! Pranking PC's! That brings back memories! Here's some of the things a friend of mine and I came up with: 1) Writing a TSR that hooked into the "Print Screen" interrupt. More of a game than a prank, it would play centepede with whatever was on the screen as the playing field. The centepede was '@' characters, the spiders were '*' characters, the player was the '^' character, the shot was the '|' character and when a spider, the last segment of the centepede, or the player exploded, commas, periods, and semi-colons would litter the screen. It turely made a mess of the screen, especially when Word was running, not to mention the noise the sound effects made. This one was popular with the secretaries in the Data Processing center. 2) One of the above-mentioned secretaries was always bragging about how good a typest she was, and how fast too (to be honest, she was *very* fast and accurate -- she was also our data-entry and JCL typest.) One day, Mark and I decided to fix her wagon, and invented keyboard.sys. This secretary liked a DVORAK keyboard, and had a device driver in her system (keyboard.sys) to convert a QWERTY keyboard to DVORAK (she also switched the keycaps around.) We disassembled her driver and hacked it to *randomly* shift the keyboard scan codes up or down a row, and *randomly* shift the scan code to the left or right one row, resulting in a *lot* of seemingly honest typos. The secretary was so confident in her typing that she didn't bother to check her typing (yes, she really was that accurate,) so the evening all the jobs she had set up using our keyboard.sys were run, they ALL crashed, and the poor night-time operator had to make sense of the screwed up JCL! 3) One of the system programmers there was a real pain. He revelled in pranking folks on out VM/SP system. He was really the only one who knew it well, and the rest of us were, for the most part, defenseless (he was the system administrator too.) I say defenseless because he used an old IBM XT on his desk as a terminal to the system. Well, since we couldn't fight him on his own turf, we fought him on ours. We wrote a modified version of ANSI.SYS for his machine. While outputting characters, it would search for a specific string (specified at assembly time), back up the cursor, and replace the on-screen version of the string with a string of our choosing. Since his name was "Becker", replacing it with "Pecker" was perfect! He never realized how we did it, but all of his programs suddenly were written but "Pecker" instead of "Becker"! To this day he probably thinks we hacked his account instead of his terminal! 4) Another prank we pulled on him was installing a TSR that hooked into the hard drive acknowledgement interupt. Each time the interrupt occured, our TSR would sit in a little delay loop, and then jump off th the real interrupt handler. The trick was, each time the delay got a little longer. The delay wouldn't usually be noticable until the machine had been running for two hours or so, and if used for a *long* without rebooting, the delay would be so great as to cause SEEK ERRORS on his poor XT. Becker was convinced that the XT had a bad hard drive and had it replaced (of course he backed it up and restored it to the new one, so our program remained installed.) that failing, he replaced the controller card - no good. After dealing with this for a while (two months or so,) we removed the TSR, and all was well. I don't think he ever figured that one out! Ah, how I miss college! +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Robert A. King | | | Systems Software Engineer | | | Kodak Health Imaging Systems | "I drank WHAT?!?" -- Socrates | | | | | king@khis.com (after 10-27-93)| | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | The opinions expressed here arn't even mine, much less my employer's! | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ From: im14u2c@cegt201.bradley.edu (Joe Zbiciak) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: practical joke Date: 9 Feb 1994 01:30:48 -0600 YKYHBPPJTL when you realize you still have a directory that lists as follows... (bear in mind that I haven't USED these in awhile, but that they make good conversation pieces.... Right Mr. Novak? ;-) -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 * -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 -csh -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 Hi -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 I -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 I'm -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 Say -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 You're -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 Your -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 cat core -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 chfn -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 ls -R | mail jeff -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 make -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 nothing -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 passwd -f -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 passwd -s -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 rm -rf * -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 telnet -r-xr-x--- 18 im14u2c 16384 May 26 1993 where All it is is a binary that reads until an "EOF"....... (ok, so I coulda linked /bin/cat.... I was lazy.) All are hard links to each other, to save space... :-) (For those of you who "don't get it", I could run these and make interesting "w" appearances: im14u2c ttyq2 12:30am 24 4 rm -rf * Note also that jeff is a systems administrator here, so that'll explain "ls -lR | mail jeff"... Laters...) From: lstowell@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Filenames to Punish Unix People? Date: 12 Aug 1994 15:20:27 -0700 In article Jeffrey L. Hayes writes: >It occurred to me that one could come up with a filename that would >!'s for instance), but I don't >know enough Unix shell to make a really nasty one. Suggestions? This is a truly rude thing to do, but on some SVR4 variants, it is NOT a good idea to create files in the /tmp directory which are of the form "/tmp/..foo". For a hint as to why, check out the startup scripts in the rcN.d directories. From: michael@hal6000.thp.Uni-Duisburg.DE (Michael Staats) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Do unto other's displays... Date: 15 Jan 1995 14:42:54 GMT ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) writes: > >I'm wondering what programs exist to get, well, interesting things >onto other people's displays. >I'm aware of xroach, which displays roaches in an X root window >(they crawl out from under windows when these are moved, or resized). >I've also heard of an X program which makes the screen seem to implode. >Apparently, there's also a program out which makes windows run away >from the mouse pointer (what's it called, and where can it be found?) >Anything else? xsnow: Paints trees on the background, snowflakes fall down and remain on the ground or on the top of windows, santa claus is riding over the screen. onkeo: Little cat or dog is hunting your mouse pointer. And of course there's xv: Given the correct arguments, it can be very surprising :-) Tschüß, Michael -- Michael Staats, Theoretical Physics, Uni-GH Duisburg email: michael@hal6000.thp.Uni-Duisburg.DE Click me! A c.u.aix archive Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: dnichols@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) Subject: Re: Do unto other's displays... Date: Sun, 15 Jan 1995 14:40:36 GMT In article , J. Chris Hausler wrote: >Thomas Koenig writes: > >>I'm wondering what programs exist to get, well, interesting things >>onto other people's displays. >> >>I'm aware of xroach, which displays roaches in an X root window >>(they crawl out from under windows when these are moved, or resized). >>I've also heard of an X program which makes the screen seem to implode. >>Apparently, there's also a program out which makes windows run away >>from the mouse pointer (what's it called, and where can it be found?) >> >>Anything else? > >Back in the late 80's when I was working with Sun 3's and the Sunview windowing >system there were several programs that would attack your (or someone elses) >display. These came with the operating system, in fact I learned about them >while taking Sun's Unix anc C courses in summer 87. One, I believe "melt" by >name would cause the display to sort of become "fluid" and trickle down the >screen getting more distorted as it went. Another, "vines" would grow leaves >like a vine on your screen slowly overtaking and covering up anything displayed. >The third that I remember, although I do not remember the name, had a bunch of >small "bugs" which would "eat" your display. Chris The vine program exists for X11, and it grows them outside the actual windows. There is even an "autumn" option, which will apporpriately change the colors. There is "flip", which will sweep in from the edges, and replace the area outside the sweep point with the mirror-image from the other edge, and when the sweep lines meet in the center, it continues on, restoring the original screen. There is "meltdown", which melts your screen irregularly till it all reaches the bottom, and then it restores normal display. The above (at least the last two), come in the X11R5 distribution. In the meanwhile, there also is xneko, which turns your mouse pointer image into a mouse (while in the background), and has a cat which chases it (as long as it is outside the windows). -- Email: | ...!uunet!ceilidh!dnichols Donald Nichols (DoN.) | Voice (Days): (703) 704-2280 (Eves): (703) 938-4564 --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero --- From: roth@uiuc.edu (Mark D. Roth) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Do unto other's displays... Date: 15 Jan 1995 20:35:54 GMT J. Chris Hausler writes: > >Thomas Koenig writes: > >>I'm wondering what programs exist to get, well, interesting things >>onto other people's displays. [...deletia...] >>Anything else? > >Back in the late 80's when I was working with Sun 3's and the Sunview windowing >system there were several programs that would attack your (or someone elses) >display. These came with the operating system, in fact I learned about them >while taking Sun's Unix anc C courses in summer 87. One, I believe "melt" by >name would cause the display to sort of become "fluid" and trickle down the >screen getting more distorted as it went. Another, "vines" would grow leaves [...deletia...] That sounds like xmelt. I have an old Linux binary, but if someone knows where I can find source, I'd appreciate the info. xflip is another cool program which causes the display to invert itself from both sides at the same time. They cross in the middle, and when they finish the display is back to normal. It's really confusing though. Again, I only have a Linux binary. The other weird display hack I have is xshrink. It basically shrinks your display from all four sides towards the middle, and then redraws the screen when it's all gone. It's pretty cool. A friend and I found the source in a shar file that is distributed with HP-UX and compiled it under Linux. (I've always thought that HP-UX had its priorities messed up; it includes xshrink but no twm!) -- roth@uiuc.edu | Mark D. Roth | http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/roth "Note that if I can get you to \"su and say\" something just by asking, you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should look into it." -Paul Vixie, vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes From: pdwalker@hk.super.net Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Do unto other's displays... Date: 16 Jan 1995 10:33:25 GMT >ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) writes: >>I'm wondering what programs exist to get, well, interesting things >>onto other people's displays. > >>I'm aware of xroach, which displays roaches in an X root window >>(they crawl out from under windows when these are moved, or resized). >>I've also heard of an X program which makes the screen seem to implode. >>Apparently, there's also a program out which makes windows run away >>from the mouse pointer (what's it called, and where can it be found?) > >>Anything else? Bounce. It caused your xwindows to bounce (you could adjust the gravity and a few other options). The first time I was bounced, I almost died laughing. For a short time at BNR, everyone in my group was getting bounced'ed. I am sure that this is proof that more effort is spend on games and fun with computers than with actual work. - Paul /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Paul D. Walker Consultant // // pdwalker@HK.super.NET HK Computer Solutions // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// From: edremy@leland.Stanford.EDU (Eric Remy) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Do unto other's displays... Date: 16 Jan 1995 15:04:19 GMT >>ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) writes: > >>>I'm wondering what programs exist to get, well, interesting things >>>onto other people's displays. >> >>>I'm aware of xroach, which displays roaches in an X root window >>>(they crawl out from under windows when these are moved, or resized). >>>I've also heard of an X program which makes the screen seem to implode. >>>Apparently, there's also a program out which makes windows run away >>>from the mouse pointer (what's it called, and where can it be found?) >> >>>Anything else? A few months back, a friend stumbled onto xoj. White Bronco drives slowly across the screen, followed by a bunch of police cars. I understand version 2.0 added a group of media helicopters as well. -- Eric R. edremy@fermion.Stanford.EDU Department of Chemistry "Any desired property can be calculated from the Schrodinger equation of the system. The solution is left as an exercise for the reader." JIR, 3rd ed. From: djohnson@seuss.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Do unto other's displays... Date: 17 Jan 1995 19:54:33 GMT There was a really funky one ages ago for Sunwindows (before X). It had a lot of options for silly things to do. Some that I remember were to find random characters and flip them horizontally or vertically. This even worked if you were just using the console without running windows I think. The great thing was that this wasn't obvious until a lot of characters had been flipped, at which point the user suddenly notices how bad things are all at once. It also had one mode where it would find a random character, then drop it do the bottom of the screen where it would bounce a couple of times, wait a while, then repeat with another character. There were some nice Amiga screen hacks. Leo Schwab did QuakeBench not long after a tremor got everyone on edge. It started slowly moving some windows, then got more and more violent shaking the mouse and windows around, and breaking the windows until things died down. DK was a program that slowly dropped pixels down until all your windows ended up as a pile of multicolored pixels on the bottom of the screen. Viacom put static on the screen. There was another where the windows would try to avoid your mouse by moving out of the way. Ah, the Amiga had nice screen hacks (I like my animated color swimming fish cursor). Of course, the original crabs was the classic. Was downloaded to an ATT windowing terminal (we called them blits, but that wasn't the correct name) where it removed itself from system control and started running. You couldn't kill it except by turning off the terminal. -- Darin Johnson djohnson@ucsd.edu "Are you a doctor?" "No, but I watched."