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Comment by gnuvince | Hacker News Reader

That's a program name that I haven't heard in a while and which brings back memories :D

When I was a teenager, sometimes around 1996 or 1997, I watched the movie "Hackers" for the first time and my immature mind was immediately drawn to the idea of using computers to sneak into places you weren't supposed to. (The pretty graphics helped too.) I went online and I found an early version of John The Ripper and thought "yes, this is exactly what I want!" It would be a few years before I even learned what Unix and /etc/passwd were, but it felt so cool to have a real hacking tool on a floppy disk.

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I was in college in 96. Email accounts were only for some limited staff and foreign students, but we all wanted one. I managed to get hold of one, with console access, because the mail interface was elm.

I downloaded the passwd file and took it home to crack a few passwords, intending to take over accounts that were unused.

Jack the Ripper beeped loudly every time a match was found. I had it running for hours, with the occasional beep, but suddenly the PC started beeping like crazy for a good minute. Turns out that the default password was no password at all, you'd set it up on the first login.

It had found a big bunch of accounts created and never used, so me and my friends had struck gold.

Even when we were inevitably caught it wasn't a big deal: Some "don't be naughty boys" over a few beers.

Simpler times.

You might also remember a pretty awesome tool called Cain and Abel that not only did hash cracking but also revealed all sorts of passwords stored on Windows including the user passwords and credentials used in Internet Explorer. As an adolescent, Cain was like God Mode for Windows. Boy did I have a lot of fun using it to mess with school computers! I did nothing seriously harmful, but pulled relatively harmless pranks. Though I did once use it to get the FTP password to someone's site and defaced it with a meme, but I soon reversed it because I felt guilty. :P

Same for me but with the SubSeven RAT.

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