-= H A C K E R S =- Issue #8, File #2 of 9 Letters >From matt@matt.net.house.auSun Apr 21 18:41:18 1996 Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 19:09:28 +1000 (EST) From: Matty To: Mrs3691@hertz.njit.edu Subject: Handy Hack G'day.. just started reading HACKERS #8 (finally got around to getting it!) and thought I may as well make a fool of myself and contribute this hack by a friend and I. It's not very exciting, and has nothing to do with breaking into secret government computers or anything - but we were proud of ourselves. This was two years ago - when the lab that held the Sun workstations was restricted to a few students 9and not open like it has been since they stuck the colour linux boxes into another lab - anyway) There was an aging line printer... 132 columns or so... extremely noisy and usually having reams and reams of paper in a complete mess on the out-tray bin and all over the floor. (it's been replaced by a laser now.. but I continue) The problem was, there were some morons in the lab who were either blind, stupid, or had difficulty reading the large sign above the printer that we had made saying "THIS PRINTER DOES NOT PRINT POSTSCRIPT" - which it didn't. Every time a postscript file came through, the printer would happily churn out literally hundreds of pages of gibberish - wasting both paper and ink - and being a general nuisance to those of us who had important things to print out. One night my friend and I had important things to print, but some lusers had postscript jobs queued ahead of us. Anyway, it was typical programmers time (like about midnight or 1am) so the Big Chief wasn't around to log in as root and nuke the jobs. So anyway, after the usual "you dipshit" letters to the offenders, we started thinking how we could get our jobs to go through. Well, as usual, the printer was out of paper anyway. So I went on the hike to the Computer Services Centre (from our faculty) with my large backpack, and returned with around 3 inches of fanfold paper. The advantage of the printer room (which is now gone - but basically it was a partitioned-off section of a general computer lab) was that the security camera was blocked by the partition - hence I could rip off as much paper & stuff as I liked. The fake job I printed out was discarded in the usual manner (banner & login name ripped into various segments and disposed in random bins along the way out along with a few cusses about the printer screwing up again) and I hiked back to the faculty with the paper. First off, we took the ribbon out (no sense wasting the ink - it was almost dry anyway) and then tried taking the paper out but of course the printer had built-in detectors and wouldn't print. So we tried the looping paper trick, but it started strangling the tractor. Next we tried getting a long strand of holey bits and looping that around - it failed due to a second paper-detector. So two loops were made - and after the long wait for the glue to dry we put them in - and it worked for a bit - then the loops jumped out. So we cut them up tight enough to not jump but loose enough not to rip (it was really crappy paper that would rip if you looked at it hard enough) - waited again for the glue to dry - and set it off again. Worked perfectly - we jammed a bit of paper over the tractor so it wouldn't get damaged by the hammers, and hour or so later the crap stuff was out of the queue and we could print our stuff. While we waited my friend wrote up a short spiel about how to clear the print buffer on the printer and how to defeat postscript jobs - this was pinned on the noticeboard above the printer where it stayed until we took it down when the line printer was replaced by a laser. The tech. staff thought it was cool - we had a few compliments from others who used the lab and experienced the same problems we did - and yeah we were pretty proud. Well that's it. Not a great hack, but still, a hack. ObLittleHack: Dialling 199 on a Telecom Commander PABX actually rings _every_ extension on the system. Kinda fun in a big shop where you spin some crap to a clueless salesperson who wanders off to find out and you reach over & grab the phone, dial, hang up, look innocent, and wait for the joyful tones of an entire PABX ringing - then the look on the faces of everyone who rushes to pick up the phone, gives the standard welcome speech "Hello, Fred Bloggs Nose Picking service, Jane Doe speaking; how can I help you?" and gets the annoying *beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep* in the ear. (Australia only - I assume the numbers & stuff differ overseas) matt@matt.net.house.au (not on DNS) tp943845@ise.canberra.edu.au (on DNS) -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT/GMU/GO d- s++:- a-- C+++ UL++++(S+) P--- L++++>$ E- W+++(--) N+(++) !o K- w--- O M-- V--(!V) PS+ PE++ Y+ PGP t+ 5++ X+ !R tv--- b+ DI(+) D++ G-- e>++ d++ r--->+++ !y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From matt@matt.net.house.auSun Apr 21 18:41:27 1996 Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 19:58:35 +1000 (EST) From: Matty To: Mrs3691@hertz.njit.edu Subject: Another Hack Oh yeah... forgot to add this one: Lacking sufficient ethernet cabling and cards at the time, we were unable to set up net.house properly - however with a few null-modem cables and SLiRP (http://blitzen.canberra.edu.au/slirp/) we finally got the place nettable. The link looked like this INTERNET | 128K_ISDN | /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\ |AARNet gateway| \______________/ | eth | /~~~~~~~\ /~~~~~~~~~~~\ /~~~~~~~~~~~\ /~~~~~\ |blitzen|--eth--|ise-gateway|--eth--|csc-gateway|--eth--|annex| \_______/ \___________/ \___________/ \_____/ I modem I (telco) I my-modem I /~~~~~~~~\ /~~~~~~\ /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\ |neil-mac|==serial==|smoopc|==serial==|matt.net.house| \________/ \______/ \______________/ In order, my PC runs SLiRP off blitzen through the annex (they haven't given proper (C)SLIP/PPP to students yet) Smoo runs slirp off my PC, and Neil runs slirp off Smoo's PC. So when you look at it, Neil's Mac was faking it was Smoo's PC which was faking it was my PC which was faking it was blitzen.canberra.edu.au *phew!* My poor little 28.8K modem was pretty busy keeping up with it all, but the link worked (albeit slow at times - especially the Mac - hehe) When Spakman moved in, the link got worse - it was the same to my pc, then we had spak's pc slirping off mine and his laptop slirping off his pc, and Neil's mac slirping off my other serial port. A nightmare of cables and not much say in whose PC went where on the desk (cable length limitations) Now I have my ethernet card back, and neil has a new ethernet-able mac, so net.house is fully coax-ed and there's just the one slirp link faking PPP from my pc to blitzen - and I IP-forward and proxyarp the rest of the house. But that serial==serial==serial==serial slirp connection to get every computer in the house on the net has to be one of the better hacks we've done this year. Again, not a 'secret government documents' - kind of hack, but I've been out of that scene for a while... matt@matt.net.house.au (not on DNS) -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT/GMU/GO d- s++:- a-- C+++ UL++++(S+) P--- L++++>$ E- W+++(--) N+(++) !o K- w--- O M-- V--(!V) PS+ PE++ Y+ PGP t+ 5++ X+ !R tv--- b+ DI(+) D++ G-- e>++ d++ r--->+++ !y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From matt@matt.net.house.auSun Apr 21 18:41:32 1996 Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 20:25:30 +1000 (EST) From: Matty To: mrs3691@hertz.njit.edu Subject: Australian ANI numbers & stuff They say there's two types of users - those who read everything first and then send the mail, and those (like me) who just keep on mailing and mailing until everything is read & sent :) Anyway, I'm on to the letters section now. I don't know about that 1114 and 1115 that some guy/gal wrote in - it could be true but it sounds kinda fake. The number I know has always been 19123. HOWEVER (I just had a brief flash of insight) the 111x stuff _could_ be for a pay phone - I'll have to test that one out. 19123 does _not_ work on pay phones (it says "No information to identify telephone number" in this cool robotic voice) - works on normal house phones though (and I assume a PABX or other non-pay-phone phone) New info: dialling "12711" will identify which service carrier you're using for long distance calls, and how to use a different carrier. I guess it's of some use to someone somewhere in Australia :) Apologies for my 3-message spam - I really should learn to collate all my thoughts first but I'm a spontaneous kind of person :) matt@matt.net.house.au (not on DNS) -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT/GMU/GO d- s++:- a-- C+++ UL++++(S+) P--- L++++>$ E- W+++(--) N+(++) !o K- w--- O M-- V--(!V) PS+ PE++ Y+ PGP t+ 5++ X+ !R tv--- b+ DI(+) D++ G-- e>++ d++ r--->+++ !y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ [ Exactly the kind of hacks I was looking for...anybody can hack into government computers, but what the hell do you do when the printer is out of paper? Definetly cool hacks. You win the Hack of the Month award, send me your snail mail address and I'll mail it out to you. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From jmfriedman@chop.isca.uiowa.eduSat Mar 30 18:27:28 1996 Date: Thu Mar 28 19:07:34 1996 From: jonathon friedman To: mrs3691@hertz.njit.edu Subject: HACKERS 7 I would like to respond to the 13 year old who wants to learn how to hack. I would not recomend it, or at least actually doing it espieccially if you are a "newbie". You will probably ask why should you tell me what to do,w ell, I am 13 years old as well, and I used a rlogin bug to get in to a computer at our university (when i was 12) and I didn'at do anything, though Ic oudl have bu t I was caught they didn't do anything like taking me to court but if I had done something I could have been, anywyas the moral, Don't hack, especially if youd on't know wha tthe hell you are doing. --Jon --- Wise man say the meaning of life is "Life is like.....Ever seen forest gump?" [ Good advice, despite the typos...in my opinion, the real hacks are those like the first two letters. Anyone can run an 8lgm script. Levy's version of Hackers is what it is really all about. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From turgjb@ee.mcgill.caSat Mar 30 18:43:39 1996 Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 14:48:22 -0500 (EST) From: Turgeon Jean-Benoit To: mrs3691@hertz.njit.edu Subject: Hackers subscription I read the latest edition of Hackers. Its a great zine! Sysadmins at our lab are quite paranoids about hackers, they feel the network is threathened by hackers every minute and even look for any file containing the word "hack" in all users home dirs. Anyway, hiding ourselves is not the way to go. So to end this story could you add my address to the subscribtion list. Thanks JBT [ The same thing is done on the computers at my campus. If anyone out there is currently in college, watch the names of the files you leave lying around. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From arcane@texnet.net Thu Oct 10 19:58:01 1996 Date: Wed, 04 Sep 1996 09:24:35 -0500 From: Brian Thomas To: mrs3691@hertz.njit.edu Subject: phone number decyphering I ran across issue six from 96 and saw the article on dialing the ANI code to determine the number you are at. In the article wyle@max.tiac.net wrote about a three digit code that will give you the phone number for any phone in an area code. In our area code (817) I have found that the numbers are actually based on the prefix and not the area code. For example 817-741-#### would dial 974 but 817-752-#### would dial 972. For anyone that tried to find a number based on this code and failed you might try again and use the numbers around it because of a difference in your prefix. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From gauravm@giasbma.vsnl.net.in Thu Oct 10 20:01:48 1996 Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 19:09:53 +0530 (IST) From: GAURAV MARBALLI To: mrs3691@hertz.njit.edu Subject: Very tightly secured UNIX system Hi! My name is WeByte from Mumbai, India. Our ISP gives us a UNIX based Lynx browser for the Internet (Lynx version 1.0). We get access to the UNIX prompt, but it is a Restricted Korn Shell ('coz it says rksh: everytime). Earlier security was not so tight and so me and my friend used to Cracker-Jack the password file, to get the passwords for the more expensive TCP/IP accounts. But not anymore man!! Security is so bad, we aren't allowed to use even "ls -la" forget "cd". So help me man. I tried methods suggested by other hackers like "shelling" out of "vi" and stuff like that, but man, we do not even have "vi". We use PICO. So help me man!! I want that passwd file. (Remember I am a rookie) Bye for now! and Thanx!! [ Another testament to the horror of not leaving back doors. ] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *