What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by _justinfunk on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @09:37AM (#31002535)

My first "hacking" success was with an ad-supported ISP called NetZero. The app logged you on to the web and had a persistent ad-banner on the screen. If you opened a full-screen app - in my case Starcraft - it would kick you off the internet.

However, I discovered that if you killed the NetZero application at just the right time (after connecting to the network but before the ad banner was initialized), you could stay online with no ad-banner and pwn some Zerg.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by todd3834 on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @10:00AM (#31002869)

Even better was that if you looked at the logs it would show the hidden credentials for dialing in. You could copy those and create your own dial up connection without using the app at all

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by sisk on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @10:29AM (#31003231)

Even better even better: the password encoding scheme was rot13 prefixed with a zero and postfixed with a one. I made a keygen for it. Completely forgot about it until this very moment!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by jcpham2 on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @12:21PM (#31004724)

Also did this with netzero. Didn't like their software/UI "borrowed" their credentials and plugged them into Windows 95 Dial up networking FTW

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by TeKxNiPP on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @07:34PM (#31009526)

haha, finally I hear someone else did this. yes exactly, I enabled logging of the PPP connection and pulled the creds, I remember feeling like I could do anything after discovering this.....the good days!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by taddevries on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @11:30AM (#31004013)

I used NetZero for a summer by setting up a dumb dialer machine that shared its network connection to the rest of the house. The dumb dialer autoconnected to NetZero when outbound traffic was detected and since there was no monitor plugged in no one ever saw the ads. Was a pretty simple solution for a couple broke college guys.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by tomc1985 on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @01:27PM (#31005698)

Hah, I remember using that old trick to sneak NetZero on my family computer and get around AOL's parental control filters when they weren't home

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by gxqoz on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @11:40AM (#31015996)

There was a related service around this time that basically paid you to use the internet. But they only paid you if you were actively running their banner ads. Of course, this was rife for abuse through scripts that faked your activity. I ended up writing some of my own before they went bankrupt.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers by Arrath on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @04:38PM (#31019933)

I did exactly the same, but substitute Diablo II for Starcraft.

[ Parent | on HN ]