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David Auerbach Explains the Inside Baseball of MSN Messenger vs. AIM
In N+1 magazine, David Auerbach explains what it was like in the "Chat Wars" of the late '90s, when he was the youngest person on the team developing Microsoft's brand-new messaging app, in the face of America Online's AIM, the 900-pound gorilla in the room. Auerbach explains how he used a network analyzer to fake out AOL's servers into letting Microsoft's client connect to AIM as well.
"AOL could only block Messenger if they could figure out that the user was using Messenger and not AIM. As long as Messenger sent exactly the same protocol messages to the AOL servers, AOL wouldn’t be able to detect that Messenger was an impostor. So I took the AIM client and checked for differences in what it was sending, then changed our client to mimic it once again. They’d switch it up again; they knew their client, and they knew what it was coded to do and what obscure messages it would respond to in what ways. Every day it’d be something new. At one point they threw in a new protocol wrinkle but cleverly excepted users logging on from Microsoft headquarters, so that while all other Messenger users were getting an error message, we were sitting at Microsoft and not getting it. After an hour or two of scratching our heads, we figured it out."
Eventually, though, AOL introduced x86 assembly code into the login protocol, and that not only stymied the MSM team, but led to some interesting warfare of its own. Auerbach's story sheds a lot of light on both good and bad aspects of corporate culture at the start of the 21st century, at Microsoft as well as other companies.
if it were applied to actually useful things? We'd have the green leisure society figured out for the entire planet.
Mostly random stuff.
If I did this, I would likely be facing criminal charges ... how is it that corporations can do this kind of stuff with impunity?
There seems to be a huge double standard in the way 'people' who are people are prosecuted under the law, versus how 'people' who are corporations are.
And once again, I will take the opportunity to say the problem is the notion that you have 'people' who are corporations.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The AOL coders did not try to incorporate a challenge and response system based on public/private keys. Or use some sort of digital signature in their clients to authenticate themselves as the "true build" from AOL. Not surprised. After all they wrote AOL.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
But AOL’s client had a security bug in it, called a buffer overflow. [...] AOL knew about this bug in their program and now they were exploiting it! That was what all those double zeros were for—they were just filling up space in the program’s buffer until they hit the end of the AOL client’s buffer and started overwriting executable code with the remainder of the protocol message. AOL was causing the client to look up a particular address in memory and send it back to the server.
There's something that you could always count on AOL for -- Respect for the users. Most companies, when faced with a trivially exploitable buffer overflow that could cause their chat client to execute arbitrary code would classify it as a bug and feel compelled to fix it, but that's not the AOL way. Instead they changed it from a bug to a feature which enhanced security by verifying the client's identity.
And if somewhere along the way someone else used it to own an army of AOL-zombie PCs, then that's just the price you pay. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few arms.
Which leaves you working with technologies nobody you know has any idea about, and no interest in getting.
Though, judging by your UID, you might still be using usenet. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Technically, it was post-DMCA. It was signed into law in 1998 - same year Auerbach graduated. But the lawsuits didn't really begin until Napster hit it big and was sued by Metallica in 2000. AOL wasn't as smart as a bunch of metal-heads, I guess.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
But AOL’s client had a security bug in it, called a buffer overflow. [...] AOL knew about this bug in their program and now they were exploiting it! That was what all those double zeros were for—they were just filling up space in the program’s buffer until they hit the end of the AOL client’s buffer and started overwriting executable code with the remainder of the protocol message. AOL was causing the client to look up a particular address in memory and send it back to the server.
There's something that you could always count on AOL for -- Respect for the users. Most companies, when faced with a trivially exploitable buffer overflow that could cause their chat client to execute arbitrary code would classify it as a bug and feel compelled to fix it, but that's not the AOL way. Instead they changed it from a bug to a feature which enhanced security by verifying the client's identity.
And if somewhere along the way someone else used it to own an army of AOL-zombie PCs, then that's just the price you pay. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few arms.
'Round here we calls 'em armlettes.
Yeah, those long forgotten chat-silo days when you needed an ICQ account, an AIM account, a MSN account, a Yahoo account to reach all your friends... fortunately XMPP/Jabber would solve all of this, and even Google would embrace the open standard with their new GTalk.
Oh! wait... it was a bait and switch.
Don't be evil does not mean be good.
They couldn't use the DMCA, Lexmark put an authentication chip on their toner cartridges and sued SCC for reverse engineering their chip for cheaper cartridges. The supreme court sided with SCC in 2004 and then sided with them in 2014 when SCC asked for damages from Lexmark for the false copyright claims. Essintally you can't claim copyright infringement because you are granting access with your protocol so accessing with a copy of your protocol is no different.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Maybe they should re-evaluate their position on the Microsoft Office formats.
But, but... the Microsoft Office formats are open and documented!
I dunno. I kinda liked the bit about going down to Morganville with an onion tied to his belt.
Well, you're new around here, and probably a kid (judging by your UID), but I can assure you, that was the fashion at the time.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon