The Planet's Most Moronic Hacker

RawGutts writes "This is the story of "bitchchecker" (the hacker) a user who lost it because he thought he had been kicked of an IRC channel by "Elch". The hacker comes back on the channel threatening to hack and ruin Elch's machine, and dares Elch to give his IP address. The address given was 127.0.0.1. "

Comments

Bash.org?

[Ninwa]

Sounds rather familiar to me...

Re:Bash.org?

[Ford Prefect]

Sounds rather familiar to me...

I think the problem's more that it's been done so many times before.

To add a bit of variation, the more clueful admin could have given a joke hostname, like one some wit at my university set up many years ago...

warez.mcc.ac.uk - "loads of stuff, but I've got it all already!"

Re:Bash.org?

[kingkoopaunion]

There are so many of these on bash. Still funny that people still do it.

Re:Bash.org?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never taken a class in postmodernism. If you carefully deconstruct the events, you'd be able to see past the obvious and get to the essence of the real story. 127.0.0.1 is the loopback address. Loopback is simply a synonym for "myself." Our antihero protagonist was therefore attacked by himself. His reactions, however, show that he was unaware this was a self referential occurence. He is clearly blocking that knowledge from his conscious. It seems likely that he is therefore suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This is a fascinating psychological study of the protagonist as antagonist. And you completely missed it.

Re:Bash.org?

[Shaper_pmp]

Really? I understood the whole episode to be a superbly-constructed allegory on the ultimately self-destructive nature of violent antisocial behaviour, with a side-moral on the dangers of hubris and the essential importance of external affirmation as an error-preventative strategy... or something... :-\

(Yeah, ok, I used to date a Lit Crit major. And you've obviously never handed in a paper on Postmodernism, either - your post was a feasible, intelligible and practically credible treatise. This is Postmodernism - You don't get points for being right, you know, just for being clever ).

Re:Bash.org?

[Krach42]

You do realize that you speak of a protagonist where he was in fact our ANTAgonist.

The protagonist of the story deceitfully responded with "myself" when queried for his name, and thus as the foolish antagonist were attacking his assumed enemy, he found only to be destroying himself.

These stories show a clear allusion to the tales in the Odessy, where Odesius told the Cyclops that his name was "no one" and thus, while the Cyclops yelled in distress over his injured eye, he yelled, "No one poked my eye out!" Thus looking delightfully ignorant.

Do you not see the TRUE parallels in these stories?

Re:Bash.org?

[andrew_0812]

Well actually I quite liked it.
I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was really particularly effective.
and er ... interesting rhythmic devices too, which seemed to counterpoint the ... er ... the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the ... er ... humanity of the ... I mean the Vogonity (sorry) of the individual's compassionate soul, which contrives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other, and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into ... into ... er ... into whatever it was the article was about!

Life imitating art, possibly?

[soapbox]

Life imitates art (or else some would-be "author" copies Illiad):

Another reason people should read Userfriendly.org.

Re:Life imitating art, possibly?

[GodHead]

"Another reason people should read Userfriendly.org."

That makes one reason.

Re:Life imitating art, possibly?

[wheany]

I read some of the strips 7 years ago. Has his art improved yet?

Re:Life imitating art, possibly?

[drsquare]

I don't know what's more satisfying to read, that post, or its moderation.

Although seriously, userfriendly must be the largest collection of forced, obvious, unfunny jokes on the Internet. It's as if it was made by a 12-year old nerd who's just discovered Linux and declared himself the 'ultimate l33t h4x0r', and thinks that he's the first person ever to make fun out of anything computer related.

Re:Life imitating art, possibly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely, reading User Friendly is like biting down really hard on an ass sandwich.

Re:Life imitating art, possibly?

[untaken_name]

I agree completely, reading User Friendly is like biting down really hard on an ass sandwich.

Two questions:
1.) Why would you read User Friendly if it's that bad?

2.) How the bloody hell do you know what an ass sandwich tastes like?

Note: I don't read User Friendly. If you like it, read it. If you don't like it, don't read it. No need to engage in hyperbole to try and convince others that your opinion should be theirs. Let the individual read it and form his own opinion.

Oh nooo

[maztuhblastah]

Aggggh!! He's hax0r3ed my computer... I have the same IP... he was using my machine!!!

Re:Oh nooo

[maxwell demon]

Well, you should have followed the good advice of the RIAA: Always protect your valuable IP! ;-)

Re:Oh nooo

[Gzip Christ]

Always protect your valuable IP!

Please help! I just found out that my computer is broadcasting my IP address. Every time I connect to the Internet, send email or submit private information to a web site, I am broadcasting this unique address. With this address, someone can immediately begin attacking my computer. If only there were something I could download to protect myself.

Re:Oh nooo

[bicho]

Yeah!
Your IP is in the public domain.
Now you can't sue anyone who has a need to use it.
I am sorry, but once your IP is apr of the public domain, there is nothing to do about it.

Re:Oh nooo

[anglozaxxon]

It's called 'Windows XP SP2'.

Had a similar, RL case

[Badgerman]

Trying to deal with an idiot on IRC. The server maintainer told him to try our alternate server at 127.0.0.1. And to keep trying because sometimes it was hard to get in.

Never saw him again.

Re:Had a similar, RL case

[kin_korn_karn]

I used to change channel topics to read "User Op Day! Press ALT-F4 For Ops!" and watch half the channel drop :)

Re:Had a similar, RL case

[Gilesx]

Actually, this just makes you sound like a dick.

There is nothing remotely funny or challenging about giving a new user an unfamiliar command to wipe his disk clean.

This example differs from TFA, as the user was the one instigating the hostile action, and therefore was receving poetic justice. However, in your example, you've just been unecessarily obnoxious. And now you come onto a geek wesbite to brag about it. Wow!

I'd suggest you put all that energy into trying to get laid instead.

Re:Had a similar, RL case

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like *you* need to reread it ... you're obviously a Windows user, because otherwise, you'd know that ' dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda ' is a command that will wipe the disk - NOT a defrag command.

Now go eat a big slice of that humble pie...

Re:Had a similar, RL case

[theonetruekeebler]

Arrrgh!

Stupid +3 threshold threaded browsing had me thinking that what I replied to was actually in reply to this.

Yah, if somebody comes to you looking for legitimate, honest help, and you screw them over in a big way, you're an asshole.

Never mind, then. Sorry.

Re:Had a similar, RL case

[alienmole]

You'll find out once you reach puberty.

I'll bet everyone $10

[gowen]

That this is a hoax. It's simply not feasible.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[sgant]

this story has been out for a while and let's face it, this isn't real. While it's funny, it's just not real.

Come on...

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[LarsWestergren]

That this is a hoax. It's simply not feasible.

What? No, no, that is not possible. They have a chatlog as evidence and everything! And it is on the frontpage of Slashdot so you KNOW it has to be true.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[jellomizer]

Well it is feasible. Script kiddies have downloaded all these cool little programs that break into their systems without any understanding on how computers or the internet work. They think their are Hot Stuff because they found the programs to break and screw with the computer. And it is probably very easy for them to get in because their local IP address is on the other side of the firewall (hardware and software). Plus because he is such a bad lier, I am sure he beleaves the junk he hears from other kiddies, with suff like the reversing firwall that attacks the connecting system.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[VanillaCoke420]

Exactly. How in the world is it possible to be so stupid to think that someone would honestly help him out in hacking their computer?

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[IPFreely]

There are a few real world instances related to this. Maybe not as severe as the story.

quotes
More quotes

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[FidelCatsro]

Reminds me of a time i was on irc once , this guy stormed into the room shouting and threatening to hack everyones computers (aparently he had been banned the night before).
So i did a whois and a few other things and found out he was using windows.
It was fairly obvious that at best the guy was a skript kiddie and had hardly any knowlidge of the system .So i said "hey mate i just hacked your system"
he mutterd some obscenitys and not so polietly asked me to prove it .
So i said to him to type msconfig in a command prompt(i still have some working knowlidge of windows).

He then continue to mutter obscenitys about this having already been there , i decided to elaborate and told him i had installed two services as proof of my skill , those were RPC and messenger(this was a few years back) . He started becoming increasingly disturbed so i went for the kill and had a freind who uses windows to netsend him a message(he had forgoten to mask his ip) and in the message it said," the only way to remove the ""Virus was to deselect the rpc service and reboot" .
A few moments later a ping timeout message and the guy was never heard from again.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[ajs]

Of course it's almost certainly a hoax, but these are always fun to read. If you ever played EverQuest, there's a very similar bit about the clueless ebayer who thought the game would be easy as long as you yelled at people a lot ;-)

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[hal9000(jr)]

Mod parent down.

The feature your talking about is called "Strike Back" and what it does is send some email, do a port scan, some other shit. It does not, in face, "attack" anything in a meaningful way. It is just a colorful phrase.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[Tassach]

Oh, I think it is real. There are a lot of clueless wannabe script kiddies out there who are too idiotic to know what 127.0.0.1 is

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[B3ryllium]

You can netsend with Samba, you know :)

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[FidelCatsro]

[10:28] your kidding , how the hell can you fake an irc log
[10:28]<you> like this!!!!
[10:29]<me> oh is this a fake irc log
[10:29]<you> yes it is
[10:29]<me> hm ,,, how odd

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[Twanfox]

While I have not actually ever used it, I believe iptables for the Linux kernel has a module that can basically turn the firewall into a mirror, swapping the source and destination fields in the IP header and bouncing it back to the originator. It doesn't do any special tasks such as port scanning or anything. However, it is not recommended to use this particular module as it simply increases the flood of packets that you wind up sending down your line. It also makes your firewall far more useful as a reflector for a distributed attack on someone else, without even needing to break into your machine to do it.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[Krach42]

I once got a story posted on my personal webpage by some guy who was complaining that he was being attacked by my computer on an IRC channel. I was like "I'm running OpenBSD, that's ridiculous."

Then I started finding evidence. You know, that was the first time I'd ever heard about the system immutable flag in OpenBSD. They screwed with my /etc/pf.conf made the last rules allow everything, and then slapped on a big system immutable on it.

So, when I actually had noticed the problem with my /etc/pf.conf before even getting the story, I was like, well easy enough to fix that. Now write out to disk. Hm... write-protected... well, just override that. What do you MEAN denied? I'M FREAKING ROOT!

Now, I system immutable flag all my important files that I don't want to change if some script kiddy does happen to get into my OpenBSD box.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[gkitty]

Though I tend to believe these things about as much as the amateur stories in Hustler, the story seems technically plausable and I have no doubt many people actually are this technically incompetent.

I used to work with a fellow whose hobby was to harass and attempt to discredit the Scientologists. They claimed he had posted their intellectual property on the internet, and when he was deposed he stated that their material was indeed available at 127.0.0.1 .

They quoted this verbatim in their claim against him, so it made it past whoever was responsible for fact checking the claim, and he boasted around the water cooler how he had bested the scientology legal staff. He explained 'localhost' on the stand and the claim was thrown out.

He was rather an odd fellow. I had quite forgotten him until some 10 years later I saw his name appear on slashdot in an appeal for money for his legal defense fund.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[TrixX]

Never, EVER, underestimate human stupidity.

If you still are underestimating it, work for a couple of days at a tech support line, and come back.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[re-Verse]

Heh - sorry that you think its real. Thinking its reals says that you beleive there are programs that for some reason slowly erase drives, counting from the highest to lowest "35% of files on your G drive are gone" counting down until he logs out. Its a dramatic effect leading to a punchline, but its not really how things work :)

Its a funny little fiction, written by someone who knows enough to know that 127.0.0.1 is a loopback, but who maybe doesn't know enough to make his story more plausible... if thats what he is going for. I don't think he really was, and its more meant as a good funny chunk of internet lore/fable, on a situation many of us common to IRC have seen.

Re:I'll bet everyone $10

[budgenator]

I find the tarpit patches to be appealing on an emotional level; hit a tarpitted port and your stuck, hit the next one, and you sink a little deeper, sooner or later the poor l33t hax04 is out of ports to get out on

Dilbert story

[martin]

Wasn't this a Dilbert strip from a while back featuring Alice as the sysadmin.....??

there needs to be a "forum watch" section

[karmaflux]

so that I can remove it in my preferences.

Re:News?

[Vo0k]

No, this is humor. Seen the foot icon?
Check "humor" in topics you want filtered off in your prefs and stop complaining.

My URL.

[jellomizer]

It is the same reason for my URL I gibe http://localhost:8080 figuring some one will see that port 8080 is open on there system (probably from a failed attempt to get apache working) and start hacking it. If sucessfull they broke into their computer. As for the most moronic hacker I have seen worse threates. Like "My Dad owns the internet and he will have you band, then you will be sorry"

Slashdotted

[Manan Shah]

Here is a cache:

Something nice I read on www.stophiphop.de (got pointed there by a comment on www.macguardians.de) is this nice story of a hacker: http://www.beast.mos-worlds.de/modules/new...php?s toryid=184 (site might be down, quite a lot of people are reading this).

In case you don't speak german (just as this hacker), I've tried a little translation to english. I might have made some spelling errors, but the original spelling wasn't perfect either. The guy really said "buy buy" in the german version. I've posted this on the forum on http://www.desertcombat.com before, so if this looks familiar, might be the same. I've corrected some mistakes and put the < > back to the right version (The DC forum does not support them). All censoring was done by this particular forum here.
Notice that in germany we get DST earlier than in the US.

The story starts (I'm shortcutting here) with an [Please control your cussing] insulting everyone on the IRC channel. Most people there believed it was rather funny, but it got even more funny. For information: The dangerous hacker is called bitchchecker and the one being hacked and original author of the comments, who is talking here, is known as Elch. 127.0.0.1 is always the IP-adress of the computer you're currently using, any request there will return to your computer.

QUOTE
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-a97f9137.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-61a2169c.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined #stopHipHop
<bitchchecker> why do you kick me
<bitchchecker> can't you discus normally
<bitchchecker> answer!
<Elch> we didn't kick you
<Elch> you had a ping timeout: * bitchchecker (~java@euirc-a97f9137.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)
<bitchchecker> what ping man
<bitchchecker> the timing of my pc is right
<bitchchecker> i even have dst
<bitchchecker> you banned me
<bitchchecker> amit it you son of a bitch
<HopperHunter|afk> LOL
<HopperHunter|afk> shit you're stupid, DST^^
<bitchchecker> shut your mouth WE HAVE DST!
<bitchchecker> for two weaks already
<bitchchecker> when you start your pc there is a message from windows that DST is applied.
<Elch> You're a real computer expert
<bitchchecker> shut up i hack you
<Elch> ok, i'm quiet, hope you don't show us how good a hacker you are ^^
<bitchchecker> tell me your network number man then you're dead
<Elch> Eh, it's 129.0.0.1
<Elch> or maybe 127.0.0.1
<Elch> yes exactly that's it: 127.0.0.1 I'm waiting for you great attack
<bitchchecker> in five minutes your hard drive is deleted
<Elch> Now I'm frightened
<bitchchecker> shut up you'll be gone
<bitchchecker> i have a program where i enter your ip and you're dead
<bitchchecker> say goodbye
<Elch> to whom?
<bitchchecker> to you man
<bitchchecker> buy buy
<Elch> I'm shivering thinking about such great Hack0rs like you
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-61a2169c.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)

What happened is clear: That guy entered his own IP-Adress in his mighty Hack-Tool and crashed his own PC. This way, the attack on my PC was a failure. I was already starting to think that I did not have to worry, but a good hacker never calls it a day. Two minutes later he returned.

QUOTE
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-b5cd558e.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined #stopHipHop
<bitchchecker> dude be happy my pc crashed otherwise you'd be gone
<Metanot> lol
<Elch> bitchchecker: Then try hacking me again... I still have the same IP: 127.0.0.1
<bitchchecker> you're so stupid man
<bitchchecker> say buy buy
<Metanot> ah, [Please control your cussing] off
<bitchchecker> buy buy elch
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-b5cd558e.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)

There was

punishable offense

[dance2die]

isn't making private IP public punishable by law?

A slightly different twist...

[ChrisPaget]

I call my main work machine "localhost". Confuses the hell out of a surprising number of people and programs...:)

Re:A slightly different twist...

[British]

I didn't want my real name showing on as a subhost, so I changed it to 'firewall'. That worked for a while until the nice IT person told me to change it from the confusion ensuing.

sanity check

[evenprime]

I think everyone who writes sploits should include a small quiz at the front. If the script kiddie is dumb enough to not know that 127.0.0.1 is a loopback address, they should not be allowed to run the sploit.

Re:sanity check

[Ecio]

Why shouldnt they be allowed to run the sploit against themselves ? :D

Re:sanity check

[shutdown -p now]

If they don't know that, natural selection will take care of them, as demonstrated by TFA.

The userfriendly version of this gag

[tmk]

Mirandas experience with 1337-hackers is here.

Does anybody know what happened to Miranda? Will she and AJ ever come together?

I've heard of similar things

[whitetiger0990]

But this just pushes the limit on stupidity! Sometimes I wonder if these people are even human. I mean come on, how did he even get on IRC?

Well if anyone wants to hack me my domain name is: localhost

I don't think...

[Patman]

...that anyone who posts a ten-year-old joke as news should be calling anyone else a moron.

Seriously, this or things like it have been around since the idea of a loopback was presented. There's got to be at least a dozen posts to bash.org with the joke, it's used on IRC at least daily, and as others have pointed out, it's previosuly been in UF and Dilbert.
It's like Taco just figured out loopbacks, and he's all proud.

Re:I don't think...

[Council]

http://bash.org/?119969
http://bash.org/?83489
http://bash.org/?38640
http://bash.org/?7658
http://bash.org/?7229
http://bash.org/?11701

article mirror

[TMW2N]

the article was VERY slow when i looked, so i'm mirroring it here

http://www.georgiagrrl.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/hack er .htm

Re:article mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea. i've posted a mirror here:

http://localhost/hacker.html

Re:article mirror

[mog007]

HTML is your friend, m'kay?

Re:How is this newsworthy?

[mccalli]

Although humerous, how is this newsworthy?

It's in the "It's Funny, Laugh" section. It's newsworthy in a section whose purpose is to make people laugh.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:News?

[karmaflux]

I like humor. Humor is funny. This is a chatlog featuring some idiot. The reason this is not funny is simple: there are a million of this guy, and we've all seen it before.

bash.org claims prior art!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Like this one ... or this one or ... or even this one.

Or maybe the author just saw this one. Enough bash links for you, editors ? :)

Re:This has happened on every IRC channel ever

[KDan]

We once convinced this guy that "peer" was this l33t h4x0r who monitored all of irc and randomly disconnected people he didn't like, and/or people who badmouthed him. That was fun.

Daniel

Re:The Planet's Most Moronic Slashdot Post

[A beautiful mind]

Hello Captain Obvious, you're Obviously late, does the Obviousmobile need some servicing?

Before

[kevin_conaway]

All you clowns start bitching about how this isn't news or this has been around for a while, I've got one word (well really a contraction) for you: Don't.

Not everyone has seen it and even if you have, its a joke, its funny, laugh. Most of us are at work and its nice to get some humor in the day.

Re:Before

[jalefkowit]

All you clowns start bitching about how this isn't news or this has been around for a while, I've got one word (well really a contraction) for you: Don't.

Not everyone has seen it...

Good point! Slashdot should run this joke every day from now on. After all, there may be some poor schmuck who hasn't seen it yet.

People have BitchChecker pegged all wrong

[selectspec]

Bitchchecker has been maligned by the press and the mob here. It's clear that bitchchecker simply spared these computer neophytes from certain demise. Why? Because bitchchecker is too cool to waste his time on some fools.

Please Rob, don't do this - OT to some extent

[rathehun]

This is an open letter to Rob and the rest of the editors.

Please do NOT let the site change into bash.org. I enjoy reading bash.org for certain things, and I enjoy reading slashdot for somethings. If I want bash, I'll go there. If I want slashdot, I point my browser to slashdot.org.

Now - please look at the stories submitted here. There is one about a fucking snail being faster than an aDSL line. Then there is a 12 year old story about a 127.0.0.1 hacker.

I realise that you guys are now owned by the OSDL. I realise that you now have ads on. However, don't let the compulsion to feed your advertising revenue overcome your editorial standards. By keeping slashdot focused on actual tech stories, about "Stuff that Matters", you attract a class of reader who is more likely to actually buy the server or the linux product that your advertiser is offering, enabling you to increase the rates that you charge.

Now I like a good laugh as much as the next person, but this is just lame. On slashdot, the stories themselves don't need to be funny, it's the people who post who make it funny. Granted, the beowulf cluster jokes are getting a bit old. ;).

C'mon guys, be strong, stand up to your sponsors.

R.

Re:Please Rob, don't do this - OT to some extent

[cowscows]

Grow up man.

I thought the snail data transfer article was pretty damn amusing. This hacker one, less so, but humor is generally pretty hit or miss.

Slashdot is about a lot of things, one of those being tech news, another being tech humor. There's icons for humor, there's big bold headlines giving you an idea what an article is about. Skim those, and skip what you don't like. That's how it has worked for years. YEARS!

Having a little fun doesn't diminish the quality of the other articles. Go to any news source, they've always got quirky stories lying around somewhere. It doesn't devalue the rest of the content, it's just there because some people like to read it.

Don't pretend like your time is so precious and scarce that you can't be bothered filtering out what you're not interested in. Slashdot is in no way an efficient way to get good news.

Re:Please Rob, don't do this - OT to some extent

[idontgno]

You probably wrote an angry e-mail to the IETF RFC-Editors about RFC 1149, didn't you?

Now I like a good laugh as much as the next person

In gaming, this is a "tell". Whenever someone uses this phrase, it actually indicates a near-total lack of enjoyment of a good laugh as much as any number of randomly-selected "next persons".

Just lettin' you know. Humor has its place, and that place is any damn place you can find it in this sad scary crazy world.

*Cracker*, dammit!

[Mirk]

The Planet's Most Moronic Hacker

No, darn it all to heck, this person is not the planet's most moronic hacker He is the planet's most moronic cracker.

Re:*Cracker*, dammit!

[Psychotext]

Actually, you're both wrong.

This person is the planet's most moronic SCRIPT KIDDIE.

Re:*Cracker*, dammit!

[Gulthek]

Sorry, while I do disagree with the negative connotation that has been atrributed to "hacker," I have to say that "cracker" is, putting it mildly, extremely lame. Rather than trying to force 99% of the population to conform to your vocabulary, just think of a new word for what you call hacker. Please don't make it rhyme.

Re:*Cracker*, dammit!

[Cyno]

There's no need to get all racist about it. So what if he's white. He's just an idiot.

Re:How is this newsworthy?

[dubdays]

You have to remember that this is slashdot...

Think back to April Fools Day.

Call me OT, flamebait, whatever. But seriously, 98% of that crap on April 1 was not funny. Irritated me so much that I decided to re-format my hard drive that day. Seriously.

It's a translation

[dtfinch]

Originally in German.

I'll take that bet...

[mykepredko]

I volunteer at a local high school helping a teacher explain introductory programming and interfacing using a Microchip PIC MCU. Last year, we had a kid that told us that he should just be given the credit because he was so good with computers.

The kid was, of course, an idiot. He could never get an assignment done because, in his words, it was too easy and beneath him. A sample assignment that he couldn't do would be to flash an LED once per second by writing an application in C - my version of the program was about 8 lines long.

After a sit down trying to level set him and tell him he wasn't as smart as he thought he was, he berated me and the teacher and told us that he was going to show us how good he was and trash our systems. I told him go for it, as I had a router firewall as well as a software firewall on my PC at home.

He asked for my IP and wrote "127.0.0.1" carefully on his hand.

The school didn't see him for a week and when he came in, he accused me that to stop him from hacking my computer, I hacked his. His parents were pretty agitated because the home computer was trashed and they wanted to bring a lawsuit against me.

We explained to the parents that 127.0.0.1 was the local PC's IP address and any attacks directed against this IP would actually be on the launching computer. We told them to go to a computer store and confirm what we were saying. We never heard back from the parents and the kid never returned to the class.

I've told a few people that if they want to show off how good they are, let's see them hack my computer at 127.0.0.1 over the years (it's in "123 Robot Experiments for the Evil Genius") and 60% of the time they've gotten the joke immediately. For the remainder, except for this one time, everybody else has figured it out before damage was done.

myke

Re:I'll take that bet...

[JaJ_D]

We explained to the parents that 127.0.0.1 was the local PC's IP

Oh NOW I understand why it's funny

;-]

Jaj

warez.phantom.com

[scovetta]

Anyone else remember warez.phantom.com? It was a DNS entry (duh) that resolved to 127.0.0.1. Very useful to fool the newbies.

HEY! This guy has all of my files!!!

Re:warez.phantom.com

[Ford Prefect]

Anyone else remember warez.phantom.com?

No, but I found one which still works...

I think the moral of this story is that all jokes done with 127.0.0.1 have been done before - in your case, you beat me by a whole four minutes with a near-identical punchline...

Re:warez.phantom.com

[Anonymous Coward]

$ dig warez.mcc.ac.uk

; <<>> DiG 9.3.1 <<>> warez.mcc.ac.uk
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 20043
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 3

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;warez.mcc.ac.uk. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
warez.mcc.ac.uk. 3600 IN A 127.0.0.1

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
mcc.ac.uk. 2895 IN NS utserv.mcc.ac.uk.
mcc.ac.uk. 2895 IN NS curlew.cs.man.ac.uk.
mcc.ac.uk. 2895 IN NS gannet.scg.man.ac.uk.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
utserv.mcc.ac.uk. 2895 IN A 130.88.200.6
curlew.cs.man.ac.uk. 11579 IN A 130.88.13.7
gannet.scg.man.ac.uk. 43500 IN A 130.88.94.110

;; Query time: 201 msec
;; SERVER: 64.182.4.32#53(64.182.4.32)
;; WHEN: Wed Apr 27 07:57:21 2005
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 186

Re:warez.phantom.com

[Ruzty]

I used to give out an address that led to some servers at the FBI. I admin'ed several hundred domain names at the time and made various entries under different domains all pointed at such well watched US government servers.

I rarely saw the results of what happened when men in dark suits came knocking at their door, but my imagination was satisfaction enough.

Re:warez.phantom.com

[Ruzty]

An FTP server is not a website. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just a newb and not an an AC troll...

So, you're saying if I told one 1337 kiddie to go get some warez at ftp.fbi.gov I'd be promoting a DOS attack? Because that is all I did, just using a name that is a DNS alias to that server. I somehow don't think the FBI would put a server on a public network with an accessible FTP daemon that could not handle an occassional connection from a moron or 2.

I have a feeling I've just been trolled though.

The Ping of NO CARRIER

[Ezza]

Back in the early days of IRC when everybody used dial up (and most people thought a firewall was something your car had), a lot of people had really crappy modems with badly written firmware (usually winmodems).

Anyway, when someone started acting like that idiot in the story on IRC, daring people to hack their machine or whatever, I'd say "OK" and send them a ping with the payload:

+++ATH0^M

And half the time, they'd suddenly leave the channel and come back a few minutes later complaining about their ISP or their phone line or something.

And I'd just be quietly giggling to myself.

It was really fun because the arrogance/stupidity of these kinds of kiddies on IRC was directly proportional to the likelyhood of them having a crap modem that would fall for that...

Re:The Ping of NO CARRIER

[quantum bit]

man ping

See the -p option.

The ping protocol says that the remote end should echo back the same data payload (usually defaults to 56 bytes in a specific pattern) to help detect data-dependant network problems during testing.

The windows ping doesn't seem to have an equivalent option.

Re:The Ping of NO CARRIER

[taniwha]

err that should be "the whole country of Australia was connected by some 9 track tapes in the cargo hold of weekly flights between LAX and Sydney" ... just for historical accuracy of course

Re:The Ping of NO CARRIER

[Dr. Evil]

Of course, the +++ escape should obviously only ever work on the sent data, so the NO CARRIER hack could only work with ridiculously stupid modem firmware.

That's why you use ping. The victim machine sends the +++ATH0^M in the reply packet.

similar method for avoiding spam

[k2enemy]

i get annoyed with sites that have unnecessary free registrations. instead of making up email addresses, i started using root@127.0.0.1

hopefully it annoys the site operators. plus, it's not really lying since that is one of my email addresses.

k3wl w4r3z sitezzz!

[Megane]

warez.bofh.org.uk
warez.satanic.org
warez.cybernothing.org
warez.dsnet.com
warez.opus1.com
aNd m4nI m03r!!!!!11!!@!@

How 2 ma3k yuor 0wnzor w4r3z sYt3!!!!11!@!

(Note to mods: RTFL before modding me down)

Yes, there are people that dumb

[doublem]

No one ever went bankrupt overestimating the stupidity of the American public.

The moment you use the rationale "People aren't that stupid" to say why something can't happen, they you've already lost the argument. :)

People buy things from Spam and give out their personal details in response to bulk e-mail. I'm sorry, but many people are dumb as rocks.

Besides, we already know what 127.0.0.1 is, but how's a novice to know this, if all they know of computers is what they've picked up in a few weeks of experimenting?

I don't find this implausible at all. Even the fact that the "hacker" never made the connection between their hack attempts and being disconnected is consistent with what I've seen of human nature. I used to have an employee who blew five fuses on her UPS and didn't realize that it happened every time she plugged her space heater into the UPS!

I had her plug the Space Heater into the wall, and the UPS stopped blowing fuses.

Re:Yes, there are people that dumb

[Fallen Seraph]

It's possible believe it or not. Several years ago I was copying my Windows directory to another drive because I was formatting my old one and wanted to take my time and pick any settings that I didn't want to lose (this way I made sure I didn't forget everything, and hard drive space wasn't an issue). I accidently clicked cut and didn't notice and after about an hour and a half the system suddenly began gagging and dieing. I was on AIM and all of a sudden my font turned arabic and then expanded to a seamingly impossible resolution. I realized my mistake and tried to abort the operation but to no avail. I'm ashamed to admit the event actually transpired, but yes, your system can chug along for a while as your files get trashed. And quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen

Re:Yes, there are people that dumb

[doublem]

his computer is still running an IRC after half the hard drive is supposedly gone.

If "Program Files" and the System root are in the second half that's being deleted, and it's a delete and not a format, then yes, I can see that happening.

As a matter of fact I have seen this happen before. At a former job, we had a sales guy who insisted on "cleaning up" his hard drive every now and then. In Windows 98 he deleted large swaths of the Windows directory and Program Files, and the system ran for the rest of the day. When he rebooted however, the system was dead.

The same sales guy did it again during the W2K roll out. The users all had admin accounts on their machines (Don't ask, it was because of a political nightmare involving a management staff who thought having less than an administrator account meant they were being treated like children.)

Anyway, he tried to delete the c:\winnt folder, and kept at it while getting error messages about files being in use. He finally called IT when he got tired of "File in use" errors. I got up there and listened politely as he explained what he'd been doing.

"You know of course that Windows 2000 is based on Windows NT, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm not running NT, so I don't need it."

"In Windows 2000, the WINNT folder is the same thing as the Windows directory in 98. Did you notice that you don't have a Windows directory?"

He tried to reboot, and sure enough, the system was dead.

A management meeting ensued where I had to defend "Renaming the Windows directory" on the new Windows 2000 systems. The fact that it's the default name, and that the systems came from Dell that way, meant nothing. The company owner repeatedly told me to "Just rename it, I don't see why you'd have to redo the server."

The moral of the story is of course, that Windows is surprisingly resilient in terms of running as vital system files are deleted from underneath it.

Re:Yes, there are people that dumb

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

My personal favorite:

I do alot of rollouts. Barely IT work at all, the guy who mops the control center floor at NASA doesn't get to claim to be an astronaut or rocket scientist either. But the worst rollout ever, was for a public school system.

This public school system was more ghetto than most, by rollout, I mean maybe replacing 3-5 of the PCs in labs that had 20 (so there was always a mix of crap systems), maybe only half the computer lab rooms in any one building. And often, things would never be scheduled right, so we were told to go in the rooms even during class, and just be quiet, teachers knew we'd be there, wasn't a problem.

Being ghetto, the kids weren't expected to do real schoolwork, and would goof off. Porn sites, gambling, all the stupidest shit you've ever seen. Well, 20 minutes into this, almost done setting it all up, this black girl screams, "Oh my god, it say I won a million dollar, is it fo real!?!". A stupid spammy popup of course, but she had no critical thinking skills, nor had anyone ever bothered to tell her how much spam like this was out there. No big deal right, she's a kid?

So, me being the fool that I am, I try to explain to her what it is, not sarcastic or anything. Really. Can't remember how I worded it, but the tone of my voice was such that I was trying my best not to sound like I was patronizing, nor like I was making fun of her. Before I had even finished the one sentence, the cow-like teacher was "How do you know, she might have won something, you jus don want her to win." As the teacher waddled over to the computer screen, I shut up, she didn't bother to follow up with a tirade, and I finished up as soon as possible. Got the hell out of there.

Re:Yes, there are people that dumb

[coronaride]

Kind of reminds me of a time when I was doing computer repair. I got a call from this guy whose computer wasn't turning on at all. I got there and the guy demonstrated to me how the computer wasn't turning on when he'd plug it in. He proceeded to take the power plug and jab it in and out of the electrical outlet very rapidly, much to my surprise. After doing this for about 10 seconds or so, he pulled it out for good, looked at me, and said, "See? Nothing's happening!" Suddenly, there was an intense arc of electricity between the plug and the outlet which, at that time, were about 2 feet away from each other. I don't even know how it's physically possible for this to happen, but I really didn't have to think to hard to realize that his computer was toast. Idiots are everywhere..

Re:Yes, there are people that dumb

[danielsfca2]

It's not patronizing if that's how they were talking!

-(not the original poster)

Nope. Hacker. Sorry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Language is defined by the useage over time. Societies collectively define words. Many words you use every day started out with very different meanings. Deal with it, find a new word for "hackers" and move on.

Cluestick

[Omni-Cognate]

The whole point of the story is that someone actually fell for the ancient joke.. I've seen the 127.0.0.1 gag a million times here on slashdot, but I still laughed out loud at this, because it looks like someone was stupid enough to actually fall for it.

Of course, the story could be a hoax, but that's not obviously the case, and would be a very different thing from the story being boring because it's repeating an old joke.

Not having personally communicated with a script kiddy, it entertains me greatly to think that some of them might be so utterly braindead as to fall for the 127.0.0.1 gag.

I H@CKED HIM

[bitchchecker]

my puter kept crashing!... I can hack all of you...i dare you to give me your ip Address if you dont il'll have my dad band you from our information superhighway!...we own it! suckers!! n e wayz, i dare you to post your ip, i hack soo fast you can't know what i did. you all pussies hahahahaaa...i can hack all of youi 127.0.01ers onl;y pussies use firewalls...turn it off and we fight

Re:The Planet's Most Moronic Slashdot Post

[tapo]

does the Obviousmobile need some servicing? Does it? It should be obvious.

Re:This has happened on every IRC channel ever

[SComps]

Years ago, on the early days of DALnet we used to have the newbies that asked for operator status to type /helpop OP ME ASSHOLE!

the resulting kill by an ircop never ceased to be entertaining.

I'm a netadmin for a very small network now, and while not proud of my youthful indiscretions, I still snicker a bit when I think of it.

This was a fun reminder of better days.

Reminded me of a story....

[dcigary]

...something I pulled on a classmate in college.

Way back in the olden days, we had a VAX/VMS mini that we did all our Computer Science projects on. Being bored one day, I wrote a "Fortune Cookie" program one day that others could include into their login profile to get a random fortune when they log in.

I decided to mess with a certain person's mind who was dialing in from home to the system (at a blazing 2400baud, mind you). I modified my Fortune code to detect that it was him logging, in, and when he did, it spawned off a new process that would inject random characters onto his screen at random intervals. I put the code in place, and watched the fun.

We saw him log in, and then log out after about a minute. Then log back in again. And then log out. And then back in again. And then out. After a while, he sent us an email complaining that he couldn't get a clean phone line into the system that evening for the life of him. Hee hee. I don't think we ever fussed up to it.

10 bucks says...

[toonworld]

He was an AOL user

Re:How is this newsworthy?

[SB5]

Have you tried recompiling your humour kernel? Try the British flavor, you should at least chuckle with that installed.

Transcript of above mentioned chatlog

[Yolegoman]

hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
<Cthon98> ********* see!
<AzureDiamond> hunter2
<AzureDiamond> doesnt look like stars to me
<Cthon98> <AzureDiamond> *******
<Cthon98> thats what I see
<AzureDiamond> oh, really?
<Cthon98> Absolutely
<AzureDiamond> you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
<AzureDiamond> haha, does that look funny to you?
<Cthon98> lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
<Cthon98> yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> awesome!
<AzureDiamond> wait, how do you know my pw?
<Cthon98> er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******'s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
<AzureDiamond> oh, ok.

Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack!

[CerebusUS]

Why does everyone always fall back to 127.0.0.1 when trying to mess with people? That whole 127 class is reserved for loopback.

Interestingly, on a windows XP machine the following happens:

Pinging 127.54.34.67 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

While on my Mepis box I get the following:
PING 127.43.54.2 (127.43.54.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.43.54.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.0 ms

Re:Urban myth?

[tres3]

My Mother called me shortly after I set up her first computer (1999) almost in tears because windows told her that she had performed an illegal operation and she thought the police were on the way. I have seen mice on the floor and people trying to use them like a sewing peddle. I have seen people pick up mice and point them at the computer like a remote control. I have seen a 5 1/4" floppy drive with four disks crammed into it because the program said insert next disk and press any key to continue (it didn't tell him to remove the other disk first). I have had a tech call about a new computer that wouldn't work only to discover that there was a power blackout. I have heard a former boss of mine tell the user that the problem was probably in the keyboard; when asked what could be wrong with the keyboard he exclaimed that it was the dumbass pushing the buttons. And I have had a user complain about the phone making a terrible noise while they were online. I even got a phone call about the computer not returning a credit card after an online purchase; the user had inserted it into the 3 1/2" drive.

To answer your question: Yes, there are people that are that dumb.

Invent an idiot proof computer and someone will build a better idiot!

Re:For those who need to read more

[Per Wigren]

Related:

[s0m3d00d] You can access my porn fileserver by typing "/disco chicks nude".
*** aaa disconnected. (chicks nude)
*** bbb disconnected. (chicks nude)
*** ccc disconnected. (chicks nude)
*** ddd disconnected. (chicks nude)

Hey !

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you doing with pictures of my wife ??

Re:Hey !

[Anonymous Coward]

What is he doing with my pictures of your wife?!

Mirror incase of slashdotting

[PatrickThomson]

here

Re:Mirror incase of slashdotting

[sicapo27]

Also here and here

Re:News?

[Tassach]

This is a chatlog featuring some idiot. The reason this is not funny is simple: there are a million of this guy, and we've all seen it before.

It's funny BECAUSE we've seen it all before.

New recruits have been getting sent out for things like left-handed smoke shifters, buckets of prop wash, pieces of shore line, and similar fool's errands for as long as there have been armies. Gofer jokes and snipe hunts are old as the hills, but it's still funny when you find someone clueless enough to fall for one.

Pranking clueless newbies is a time-honored tradition, and is a necessary rite of passage for the prankee.

Word Use in Subcultures

[Tony]

Language is defined by the useage over time. Societies collectively define words. Many words you use every day started out with very different meanings. Deal with it, find a new word for "hackers" and move on.

Physicists still use the word "velocity" to mean both speed and direction, while the mainstream uses it to just mean speed. All scientists use the word "theory" to mean a tested hypothesis, while most people use it synonymously with hyptohesis.

I could go on with similar examples. We don't have to give up our name "hacker" to mean a coding guru, and cracker to mean a malicious coder. We are a subculture, and it is perfectly acceptible for us to use very tightly-defined words that the rest of socieity misuses. We do not have to accept their definitions just because everyone else uses it that way.

We do not have to participate in consensual stupidity.

Re:The Planet's Most Moronic Slashdot Post

[TheoMurpse]

I wish I had my Halloween photos from two years ago -- I went to the big Halloween party on 6th Street in Austin dressed as Captain Obvious; I just put some crazy mismatched clothes on and stapled a big sign to my shirt that said "CAPTAIN OBVIOUS". When people would ask me who I was supposed to be, I would say in a rather large voice, "I'M CAPTAIN OBVIOUS ISN'T IT OBVIOUS HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" and run away.

Yes, I am aware of how stupid I am.

Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack!

[19thNervousBreakdown]

It means the entire 127.x.x.x block is loopback addresses, not just 127.0.0.1

My favourite ...

[aspeer]

<Cthon98> hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
<Cthon98> ********* see!
<AzureDiamond> hunter2
<AzureDiamond> doesnt look like stars to me
<Cthon98> <AzureDiamond> *******
<Cthon98> thats what I see
<AzureDiamond> oh, really?
<Cthon98> Absolutely
<AzureDiamond> you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
<AzureDiamond> haha, does that look funny to you?
<Cthon98> lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
<Cthon98> yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> awesome!
<AzureDiamond> wait, how do you know my pw?
<Cthon98> er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******'s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
<AzureDiamond> oh, ok.

Are you serious?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of shit gets posted, when so many good articles get shitcanned? What the fuck barbeque?

This story reminds me of this one time when this script kiddie asked me for my IP address and I told him 127.0.0.1! Oh wait, that's because it's the same fucking story! That's because everyone has seen this done or done it themselves once in their fucking life, and nobody fucking cares.

Let me tell you another story. This one time, I was at a coffee shop, and the girl making the coffee was hot, and she said something to me, and my response was witty and cute, and she laughed and it was funny and it made me feel cool. Then I drank my coffee, went home, and masturbated.

NEWSFLASH: Nobody fucking cares!

BT

Teg Teg, tell him about the time you were witty!

Re:Are you serious?!

[Mr. Cancelled]

NEWSFLASH: Nobody fucking cares!

bitchecker?? Isat u?

Re:Are you serious?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me tell you another story. This one time, I was at a coffee shop, and the girl making the coffee was hot, and she said something to me, and my response was witty and cute, and she laughed and it was funny and it made me feel cool. Then I drank my coffee, went home, and masturbated.

NEWSFLASH: Nobody fucking cares!

No, please. Do go on, you are just the kind of guy I have been looking for all day. Spice it up a little, I am already all damp and tickly....

BTW, I am 22 years old, my measurements are 34-25-32...and the other leg too.

Re:Are you serious?!

[Chicago Wolves]

Dude... I just choked on my Sprite from reading your post.

Hey. HEEEEEYYYY!!

[krygny]

That's MY IP address!

SONOFABITCH!!

Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack!

[b1t r0t]

Pinging a random 127.x.x.x address doesn't work on OS X or Solaris. But it does work on W2K and Linux.

I guess if you were dealing with a total moron n00b script kiddie you could expect him to be running W2K or XP and it would work anyhow, and if not, you could just blame it on your l33t firewall.

Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack!

[KutuluWare]

There is no real consensus on how this is "supposed" to work. The entire 127/8 is reserved for loopback purposes, but that doesn't mean it *must be* associated with the loopback device:

C:\Documents and Settings\kutulu>ver
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
C:\Documents and Settings\kutulu>ping 127.0.0.2

Pinging 127.0.0.2 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time1ms TTL=128

kutulu@system1:~$ uname -rs
Linux 2.4.28
kutulu@system1:~$ ping 127.0.0.2
PING 127.0.0.2 (127.0.0.2): 56 octets data
64 octets from 127.0.0.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.0 ms
64 octets from 127.0.0.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.0 ms

kutulu@system2:~$ uname -rs
FreeBSD 5.4-PRERELEASE
kutulu@system2:~$ ping 127.0.0.2
PING 127.0.0.2 (127.0.0.2): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Can't assign requested address
ping: sendto: Can't assign requested address

Not so smart

[Anonymous Coward]

If he was smart, he'd have told Slashdot his website was at http://127.0.0.1

BT

Alt-F4

[Veinor]

If you know that someone is running *nix, tell them 'Do a kill -9 for secret Unix hacking tips!'

IPv6 ruining all the fun?

[KhaymanUCSD]

Everyone's got stories of feeding the idiots the loopback address. With the advent of IPv6, I wonder how many people will be succeptable to this when you tell them that your IP is ::1. Maybe 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 they'll fall for...

Re:IPv6 ruining all the fun?

[bani]

even better is to just make a dns entry for that.

and for those "edumucated" leet hax0rs who have learned that 127.0.0.1 = loopback, just make it 127.92.36.148 or something.

leetwarez.somedomain.com -> 127.92.36.148

keep them script kiddies busy for days!

Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack!

[CerebusUS]

The entire 127/8 is reserved for loopback purposes

Actually, 128 is not reserved for that purpose. Consider this:

Nah, he was using 127/8 as a netblock representation. saying 127/8 is equivalent to saying 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0, just as saying 192.168/16 is shorthand for 192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0

I didn't realize that some of the unices out there didn't respond to the other loopback IPs, though.

Slashdot. Hopefully everyone gets to learn something (relatively useless) today :-)

Re:Fish stories..

[FidelCatsro]

Well if your calling me a lier then you fail to note i mention in the story that i told him how to stop it from starting up .

The only thing changed is i just picked up the highlights, I have no idea why the guy disapeard he may have just left , but it was my assumption he followed my advice and then rebooted his computer...

If you disbelive me , then fair enough you are welcome to you opinion but i want thank you not to insult me in future without a shread of evidence either way .

The vanity plate NONE

[coyote-san]

Calling a unix system localhost could have interesting repercussions due to the ambiguity when resolving names. (Not every configuration file or app will use '127.0.0.1' or '::1' (iirc) instead of 'localhost'.) Worst case scenario isn't that traffic intended for you is lost, it's traffic intended for internal use by other systems is broadcast and/or their applications mysteriously fail.

The canonical warning tale is probably the genius who got the vanity plate NONE. He routinely parked illegally since the ticket would be issued to NONE and the system would kick it out as uncollectable.

Until one fine day when a clerk noticed that someone had registered a car with that vanity plate. He put 2 and 2 together and our genius got hit with tens of thousands of dollars in fines because his tickets caught up with him... and so did tickets for countless abandoned cars.

I don't know if this is just an urban legend, but it's definitely a good warning against being too cute.

Re:The vanity plate NONE

[pjaromin]

It was "NO PLATE" and according to snopes.com it's true. http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp

Mirror

[illuminatedwax]

Because of the severe slashdotting, Elch himself is providing a mirror to the article. Check it out at this site.

Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack!

[CerebusUS]

Wrong. Read the RFC. The whole 127 is reserved, but only 127.0.0.1 is loopback.

bzzzzt. Time for an Anonymous coward to also learn something relatively useless today :-)

according to RFC 1166:

The class A network number 127 is assigned the "loopback" function, that is, a datagram sent by a higher level protocol to a network 127 address should loop back inside the host. No datagram "sent" to a network 127 address should ever appear on any network anywhere.

Source: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1166.html

Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack!

[DeputySpade]

In light of my undying optimism and hope for the future of all mankind, I am going to refrain from assuming what others have, that you need instruction. Instead I will assume that this was one of the more masterful trolls we will see on /. today. Well done.

<keanu>WOAH</keanu>

[TiggertheMad]

This story reminds me of this one time when this script kiddie asked me for my IP address and I told him 127.0.0.1!

Hey that is freakin, spooky, because that is my IP address! I thought these things were supposed to be unique...

More real-life examples .... moronic lawyers

[taniwha]

Back during the start of the never-ending 'Net vs. Scientology online war the Scientology lawyers went after Keith Henson, they had him in a deposition one of the things was that they were trying to find out who was running the ftp server at 127.0.0.1 - seems Keith had joked on usenet about how many of scientology's secrets (probably the space alien stuff) were there, the scientologists had looked there and sure enough they were - Mr Henson was recorded by the court reporter as 'laughing hysterically'

Of course this is the same deposition where they tried to find out the real name of that evil 'majordomo' who was running all those anti-scientology mailing lists

Serious

[Mr. Underbridge]

This story reminds me of this one time when this script kiddie asked me for my IP address and I told him 127.0.0.1! Oh wait, that's because it's the same fucking story! That's because everyone has seen this done or done it themselves once in their fucking life, and nobody fucking cares.

Sure, everybody has. But how many times has said kid actually gone through with it and nuked his damn box? Assuming story is true, of course.

Other problems with your post:

This kind of shit gets posted, when so many good articles get shitcanned? What the fuck barbeque?

If you expect good articles on slashdot, you're in the wrong damned place. This is where self-righteous losers come to discuss the latest Apple MHz bump, or how some administrative oversight is proof of America's descent into totalitarianism, or the latest shitty Star Trek/Wars/Buffy show. Oh, and trolls like me who like to screw with them.

So why the hell are you here? Nice post, by the way.

The ping of Death

[Emetophobe]

When I was 13, I used to be in a hacking group known as ViRii on Undernet.

Around that time (early to mid 90s), there were several hacker group wars going on Undernet. I remember the +++ATH0 exploit among many dozens of other exploits at the time.

In mIRC, you could do: //raw NOTICE VictimsNick : $+ $chr(1) $+ PING +++ATH0 $+ $chr(1)

And their modem would hangup/reset.

There was a guy name VallaH i knew in my hacker group. He was the one who original discovered The Ping of Death in Windows 95. He also wrote jolt.c and many others. He was among the first people to find remote exploits in Windows 95. (Microsoft actually hired him that year to work on Windows NT network security, I was quite jealous at the time). The funny thing is, he only designed it to nuke Windows, but it also worked on early Linux 2.0 kernels, solaris and mac (since they all used mainly the same BSD tcpip code i'm guessing)

Vallah later lost his job at Microsoft due to his hacking past/present i'm guessing.

Quoted from this archived email:

"My friend, I will call him Vallah. Lost his job at Microsoft working on network interoperability(sp?) for Windows 2000 when the FBI showed up with a warrent for the files on his machine at work. He has still not been charged with anything and most likely wont be... again, mainly becuase he hasn't done anything. Guilty by association and an infamous past."

I wasnt a hacker myself, more of a wannabe (script kiddie) hacker. I mainly just nuked other people on IRC and did channel takeovers, etc.. The fun lasted until I was around 15 (i'm now 22). Alot of the more serious hackers I was associated with ended up getting caught by the FBI. I have literally hundreds of old hacking stories from my early days with IRC. (Note that i'm now into computer security, not destructive behaviours like hacking).

I have one other story about a guy I knew around my age by the name of XaiL. He was 13 at the time, and he hacked nasa.gov using an old phf exploit. I used to talk to him on the phone long distance, he was a funny guy, sounded like a girl, he hadn't even started puberty by the sound of his voice. I do admit that the only hacking I ever did was using this same phf technique, long since patched. I'm not proud of my early days as a destructive script kiddie hacker, but at the time, it was so much fun.

I also had a very small part in writing the mIRC script known as 7th Sphere (my code was included in the last release, version 3.0, not the previous 2.666). At the time it was a hugely popular "war" script used by script kiddies to nuke, flood, do channel takeovers and many other evil deeds on IRC servers. It came with programs made by Rhad using VB, most notably was "click.exe", a program that let you instantly "nuke" any victim. If you do a google search for click.exe or "Rhadware", you will get the idea of how evil his programs were.

Re:Deleting hard drive

[marcansoft]

The kernel is always in RAM. filtering/NAT is in the kernel. If the HDD driver/subsystem is robust enough, nothing will happen to it if the HDD dies, bar a few gazillion error messages about the HDD on dmesg. Even programs loaded into RAM or cached might still work, since it's not a clean unplug and thus it won't flush or even notice that all access fails. Just loading new data will not work.

I've hotplugged my DVD drive on the ATA bus. No big deal, as long as the computer starts up with it it will let you unplug it with no more problems than a few error messages. Plug back in, and it still works. The ATA interface is very simple, not much can happen if stuff is unplugged. Basically the two problems are the fact that commands will fail (d'oh) and that the outputs are left in an open state and may float around. The latter depends on the controller chip, and the former on the software.

I'll unplug my HDD now, just to see what happens. (same risk as a power failure, and I've yet to see a power failure kill my reiserfs partition.) Note I'm running Xorg and amaroK playing MP3s and a bunch of software. Let's see what happens.

Seriously, what's so moronic about this?

[anewsome]

The victim must be a moron himself. I just hacked into 127.0.0.1 myself and the guy's system is still vulnerable. Un-freaking-believable. You would think that after a huge slashdot story about how moronic this guy was, he would fix his system. What an idiot!

Only on /.

[rah1420]

can a comment about the loopback address on a faintly humorous submission turn into a few-page-long treatise about network addresses and CIDR notation.

thanks guys, this was funnier than the original article. Wish I could mod the whole thing.

Re:Deleting hard drive

[marcansoft]

Nothing spectacular, really. The music eventually stopped and programs began to freeze. First IRC, then mozilla, then the whole X (and since I couldn't get to the console I had to reboot. SysRq did work though, which proves the kernel was OK)

If I had "rm -rf /"'d it wouldn't even get close to that. Remember inodes aren't removed until their usage drops to zero, so all open files would continue to function. Swap would be OK too. Pretty much everything would work short of opening new programs or trying to load new data.

wha??

[dmiracle]

Now do you realize your privilege? Or do you think that these kids and teachers just chill at the ghetto starbucks and surf the ghetto-net with their ghetto ibooks?

To quote Lil' Flip "you don't know what I been through so don't judge me."

Re:May have been news May 23 of 2001...

[bani]

many of us have experienced the feared "127.0.0.1 hax0r" in real life. for us this is no urban legend.