the kantihack.one of my first
performances..
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the kantihack was taken place in 1988. at the gymnasium (high-school) i
went there was small computer room. approx. 20 pcs. at this time the
pride of the physics and mathematic teachers. of course most students
just didnt practiced boring lessons..most of them where playing games.
dirty pictures existed just in ascii resolution..and internet was far
away...1200 byte modems connected to a telepac gateway was my world
those days. anyway
the teachers didnt liked having uncontrolled data on those computers..
so what to do. just what everyone would do. they bought a special super
high security software for around 30'000 bucks to protect the system.
not to mention that for this money they could have bought at least 20
more computers or a few more harddisk drives....
so one day the chief computer room teacher came in and said to us
.heheheh now we are well protected you can not load any more stuff on
those machines and executing software is only possible from a menu
(chosing between word.and some other bullshit software). we have the
finest protection ever. even police and most swiss banks use the same
protection. if you can hack you get 2000 bucks from the company...
well, 2000 bucks was not too bad. so lets see what we can do.we where 3
people and quickly some ways where found.
it was so simple to trick out the security soft.... a few lines in
assembler code. a few interrupt 21s to get some control. all written in
machine language typed in as a word (love) letter and the 30'000 bucks
system was fucked within days.
but we tought lets give them a nice surprise. i wrote a nice ascii-art
intro with stars and random build up text messages, describing what we
think of using 30'000 buck for nothing.... coded all in assembler i
encrypted the text and used a simple number as file name. this was
inserted into the autoexec.bat and at every startup someone had to
watch for 30 seconds my intro....then hit the space bar and using the
computer as normal. not really dammage. just stealing 30 seconds of
someones time.
sure it was a big story. there where big questions why such a 30'000
system was just useless within a few days. the responsible persons
where just slapped in their face....hmmm. so then the y began to track
us. sure it was not difficult. among 1200 students there where not too
many more than the necessary time in the computer room. they catched us
and instead of paying the 2000 bucks they wanted us to throw from
school.
and additionally to charge at least 10 hours (each 160 sfr for a
computer expert) to remove the software. but because i encoded all the
text our super specialist, equiped with a text editor to scan the
harddisk drive for my dirty words couldnt find anything. also he
thought the number 5 in the autoexec bat is a parameter.well.well. what
an expert. in the end i had to remove the intro myself.
our only chance to stay at school was mass-media. so we sold our ass to
blick and all other newspapers...was a good experience anyway...
it was big stories in all newspapers the day after. people where behind
us. not understanding why such computerfreaks will be punished...also
the scandal was there .police had same system. most of swiss
banks...not too good if some 15 year old guys can hack it within a few
days....so then they reduced the penalty to 1 year of observation... no
more days off...... and social work...
also the softwarecompany was bankrupted after our small hack..... never
seen those 2000 bucks.
here some original radio cuts from then....
kantihack1 on swiss radio drs.
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last update 24.08.2004