It’s pretty trivial to write a piece of software that records key presses to a log file. It turns out, if you take a kid that really really likes computers, and you lock them out of their computer, they will use their knowledge of computers to be able to use their computer.
At first I was happy to just run a mandrake Linux live CD but they found out what I was doing and disabled the disk drive as boot option.
Eventually I had to figure out how to maintain access, so I intentionally borked the parental control software by rebooting in safe mode over and over and corrupting the files for it before it could initialize and lock the files. Eventually it was so fucked they had to log on to fix the parental control installation which was when I got the password.
After I got the password and could do what I wanted again I found out how to clear CMOS which reenabled the disk boot.
I think we went back and forth a little longer, but eventually they gave up and I was allowed to just administrate my own computer.
Unauthorized access by itself wasn’t illegal at the time, but yes, nowadays it would be a crime. One of the major points of the 87 Computer Fraud act was that you gain unauthorized access with the intent to defraud or damage. I was trying to fix my computer that I owned and bought with money I had worked for because 30 minutes a day wasn’t enough to type up a paper for school, let alone to actually do anything of any consequence on dial up.
I never said he gave me the password.
Then how did you know it?
It’s pretty trivial to write a piece of software that records key presses to a log file. It turns out, if you take a kid that really really likes computers, and you lock them out of their computer, they will use their knowledge of computers to be able to use their computer.
At first I was happy to just run a mandrake Linux live CD but they found out what I was doing and disabled the disk drive as boot option.
Eventually I had to figure out how to maintain access, so I intentionally borked the parental control software by rebooting in safe mode over and over and corrupting the files for it before it could initialize and lock the files. Eventually it was so fucked they had to log on to fix the parental control installation which was when I got the password.
After I got the password and could do what I wanted again I found out how to clear CMOS which reenabled the disk boot.
I think we went back and forth a little longer, but eventually they gave up and I was allowed to just administrate my own computer.
oh… so crime
E: OH – I see. Wow. I learned everything I know about networking and computers in a similar way :P Thanks Dad
Unauthorized access by itself wasn’t illegal at the time, but yes, nowadays it would be a crime. One of the major points of the 87 Computer Fraud act was that you gain unauthorized access with the intent to defraud or damage. I was trying to fix my computer that I owned and bought with money I had worked for because 30 minutes a day wasn’t enough to type up a paper for school, let alone to actually do anything of any consequence on dial up.
Oh my dad was cooler than that and would just cloak and dagger me for porn