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JJ's Tech Tales: The Age of Hacking - Printable Version

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JJ's Tech Tales: The Age of Hacking - Moonshroom - 11-23-2022

This feels really weird to admit, but there was actually a time in which there was no higher form of "entertainment" than to hacking (or trying to, anyway) into other people's e-mail accounts for a quick laugh.

Why? Because being a hacker felt like the coolest idea in the world and most of the forums I visited consisted of angst-heavy tweens and teens who really wanted to leave a mark (whatever that meant) and there was no better way to do so than to being as annoying as possible and as destructive as possible.

Of course, most people wouldn't have any idea of what they were doing and settled for leaving some "social traps" (ie, ways for other people to hand them their login information over without them fully realizing it). But others actually tried to learn the craft and started experimenting with keyloggers, mail bombers and other such tools. Soon enough, the name of one site would become general knowledge and attract many people to its download section, in which the would-be hackers would get their hands dirty with some of the aforementioned tools.

The results... varied.

While some people actually managed to gain access to other people's accounts, this was done mainly as a joke and control was restored to the rightful owners after a couple of minutes and some good, old MSN Messenger trolling. Others, however, went in fully expecting to cause trouble for their targets and would, indeed, cause them a ton of trouble down the road, including getting them banned on group chats and blocked by their friends after acting in the most hellish way possible. A third group --and actually a sizeable one-- was only rewarded for their trouble by getting the whole situation blown up on their faces and ended up bombing their own e-mails, which scared them off completely from the practice. 

Things would remain more or less the same for about a year and half after the first "attacks" were reported, with no further consequences for most people than finding their MSN Messenger custom message changed to something embarrassing. However, someone actually went far enough to stop the practice once and for all (even though they failed in their attempted hacking).

I remember coming into the forum one day and seeing a post-it message written by the administrator himself stating that anyone found discussing, sharing or actually utilizing hacking tools would be perma-banned from the board and their IP would be blacklisted from the main site as well. Why? Because apparently some "genius" tried to gain access to the e-mail addresses and forum accounts of all the moderators, as well as the administrator at the same time. Naturally, the administrator wouldn't let such a thing go unpunished and, while he never discussed publicly who was behind the attacks, we lost a number of members who had never even shown that much of an interest in hacking before, so it was probably a group effort put forth to cause discord on an already stained community.

And that was pretty much it for the hacking days of the old forum. Of course, the practice at large didn't stop there and there would be new victims all through the years, but the days of doing it publicly were long gone. It is crazy to think that some people would actually get skilled enough as to being an actually threat to some, while others would do no better effort than to write e-mails from an """""official""""" MicroSoft account indicating that a password recovery was needed and that the new password would only be approved by getting a copy of the current one sent back to them (yeah).

Man, the early 2000s were a goldmine of weirdness.

RE: JJ's Tech Tales: The Age of Hacking - SpookyZalost - 11-24-2022

Wow, that's a great story Moonshroom as a cyber historian I love reading stories that give a window into the past.  Social engineering and cracking is always an interesting topic.

RE: JJ's Tech Tales: The Age of Hacking - Kyng - 11-24-2022

I have to admit, I wasn't entirely innocent of this: I did try it on a couple of people at school. However, even on the one occasion when I did get in, I signed out immediately afterwards, and didn't cause any trouble.

Fortunately, I'm not aware of any times when any of my accounts were broken into: I think my passwords were all too secure for any amateur who tried to guess them :P . But even if anybody did somehow get in, they didn't do anything that I would have noticed :lol: .

Thanks for sharing!

RE: JJ's Tech Tales: The Age of Hacking - Moonshroom - 11-26-2022

Glad you guys enjoyed it.

I will continue writing these :)