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Comment by s_d | Hacker News Reader

Hi party people, this is Sir Dystic, author of the original 1998 Back Orifice. Great to hear all of you reminiscing about my software!

One thing that I did not predict when I released BO: The distribution ZIP contained three files, a readme.txt, the BO server and the BO client. In retrospect, the BO server should probably not have been distributed with the original .EXE extension as a LARGE portion of people apparently downloaded the ZIP, unzipped it and just double clicked on the BO server, immediately infecting themselves.

Keep disturbing shit please.

..--oo] ooM [oo--..

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An interesting bit about the internals and development of the BO code: The BO server was written in C and consisted mostly of a single while(1){ switch(command): ... } loop, the only functions were where callbacks were required, and it reused the same 5 variables in main() for everything. I got feedback from more than one security professional that this made it very difficult to reverse engineer. I think when I was writing it my concern was minimal overhead, and not using the stack must save SOME important resources?

When Dildog wrote BO2k I gave him the BO source to start with, he claims he rewrote everything from scratch and seemed a bit horrified by my code, which was never intended for distribution.

..ooM? ..ooM!

The only bug I recall being reported on BO was in the built in HTTP server (which I wrote from scratch in C), if you shared a specific directory with the HTTP server, on Internet Explorer it would not let you click through to sub-directories because of a missing slash at the end I think. I only ever tested it with Firefox which seemed to not care if the slash was present. I found out about this from people who thought it was a feature, and were horrified to find out that anyone COULD access those sub-directories if they manually added the trailing slash or used a different browser.

.ooM.ooF.

Was Firefox around in 1998?

He probably meant Mozilla

You single-handedly made me interested in computers deeper than playing Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. You made a 12th grader who didn’t have a decent computer at home start learning DNS and saving his dollars for a Pentium to start programming on.

I got into so much trouble my Senior year of High School with your software, but it put me on a path.

Your software and NetBus was all I needed. We owned EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING in our town until we got found out. Naive me at the time thought it was really cool, until the Detectives showed up…

Here’s to you. Thank you.

You're literally the reason I got into IT in the first place. I'd messed around viewing source and writing static HTML for local businesses etc but it was never enjoyable, it just got me extra money towards rent (I had flunked out of highschool and couldn't get a job)... then a friend and I discovered BO and started infecting friends on IRC/ICQ/etc, it blew our freaking minds.

Still got my cDc/l0pht/etc stickers on my old laptop and it led to my entire career. Thank you. I owe you many beers (or glasses of milk I guess).

You're... you're still putting l33t sigs at the end of your messages, like it's still the late 90s and this is USENET.

Frickin' love that.

I bought my first computer in April 1996. I learned a lot about network thanks to BO. I remember always being cautious about client vs server but I managed not to infect myself. Fun times. Thank you, sir.

Thank you for bringing additional fun into our teenage nerd lives. We got in some trouble in those days with BO!

Big fan of yours Sir Dystic, thanks for all the fun and games. All the best and hope you and yours are well.

Thank you for your service

Sy^

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