I have a few posts in the works, but personal matters have kept me too busy to invest the time they deserve. So I wanted to add a quick story for the few people that follow my blog.

My first hack happened in 8th grade, back in the late 90s. The computer lab at the school had just switched from a mainframe networked to workstations, to a LAN with Gateway 2000 PCs Windows 95. It was the school’s first computer lab with internet access, and the teachers were given email addresses. A few teachers proudly tacked them to the bulletin board on the wall at the front of the lab for everyone to see.

We had a new computer lab teacher, fresh out of college. She was genuinely nice and seemed very excited to be there.

The teacher explained that these machines had a program called “Deep Freeze” which prevented access to anything other than the shortcuts on the desktop, by locking out the Start Menu and prevented right clicking on the desktop icons and taskbar. The teachers were confident that the only abuse these computers could suffer was physical, such as gum in the keyboard.

Put yourself in my shoes for a moment. Imagine being a middle schooler in the 90’s who had watched the movie “Hackers” way too many times. The internet was like magic, and hackers were wizards wielding that magic. This middleschool wannabe hacker got excited by the restrictions the teacher was describing, and saw it as a challenge.

Before this, I had read a collection of text files called “The Happy Hackers Guide to Mostly Harmless Hacking.” It can now be found on textfiles.com. I knew becoming a hacker didn’t happen over night, and that I needed to crawl before I could run. From those texts I learned to use Telnet, and had a habit of scanning for ports on a server and using telnet on each port to see what would happen.

I sat in the computer lab with the rest of my class, opened Word, and rushed through our assignment. It was a tutorial on how to use Copy, Cut, and Paste, and how to open and save a Word document. The final instructions said to save the document when we were finished. I click “Save As” which opened to root directory (or C:\ Folder) and had an interesting thought…

I quickly saved my document to the Desktop, and clicked “Save As” again. I had never heard of Deep Freeze before that day, but I was already noticing a potential vulnerability. I changed the file type from “Documents” to “All Files” and started exploring directories within the Save As window. I made it to C:\Windows and decided to test it. I right clicked on mspaint.exe and selected “Open”. To my surprise, the Paint application opened on my screen. I closed it and grinned.

I found and opened Telnet.exe. “What should I do now?“ I thought, with no real plan in mind. The classmate beside me had taken notice and asked, “How did you open that?” While giving him the quick run down, I noticed the teacher’s email addresses on the bulletin board at the front of the room.

I already knew that nearby Virginia Tech had an SMTP server that would allow anonymous emails to be sent, and the address was easy to remember, smtp.vt.edu port 25. I decided to play a little prank. I opened a connection in telnet to VT and did the usual HELO commands with a fake sender address, and started composing an email to one of my teachers.

Before I could finish typing the message, I felt a hand in my shoulder. I turned to the guy beside me, who was frantically trying to close Nike.com in Netscape Navigator, and then looked up to see the computer lab teacher staring straight at me with a panicked look. She said “close everything and come with me…”

I followed her out of the classroom into the hall, and she closed the door behind us. In a panicked voice she said “(My name).. I’m getting calls from the school board telling me something is up. I don’t know what your doing, but you need to stop right this minute, or you will face suspension! Do you understand!?” I looked down and nodded, and we walked back into the lab.

I entered the classroom and realized the room had turned silent and my classmates were all staring at me, some were trying not to laugh. The lab teacher darted back to her desk and grabbed the phone that had been left on hold. Apparently the teacher had talked loud enough in the hallway for everyone inside to hear. I wasn’t the type of person to show off to everyone, and rarely got in trouble. I didn’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed.

Rumors spread fast in middle school, and despite my attempt so far to keep a low profile, many people were already calling me a hacker. Explaining what actually happened didn’t help things, and for a few days I was known as the kid that hacked Virginia Tech from the Middle School’s computer lab.