~ PRANKS & HUMOR INDEX ~
<h1>JAVASCRIPT ERROR!! RELOAD</h1>

ZEROKOOL (aka ZEROKOOK) was one of the biggest lamers ever to grace a.d.w.h. He wanted to form a "hacking" club so he put up a site with a cheezy JS PW and some links. When that was hacked in mere seconds, he set up a site with another user then pretended to hack it... as user#2 "protested". This joke was a tribute to the ZEROKOOK. Sadly, it's amazing how many fell for this joke. There were numerous post replies asking how it was done!

Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Fri, Sep 25, 1998
From: ulTRAX@webtv.net 
I HACKED ZEROKOOK/MADDOG'S POSTS
 
No shit!!! And I hacked not one but *several* of them!!!! Hell, I'm no lamer. 

I found these posts secreted away in a firewalled hacking newsgroup so not even Elite PC hackers could get to them. When I found them only their title was visible. I could tell this was going to be tricky. Their content was hidden inside. I needed to muster all my skills to research the proper access codes. Could I do it? 

I did a quick INFO search on them and got their all important Article ID numbers. From there I created a sophisticated embed code back at my homepage and used the top secret Trick to embed the embed in an embedded screen. Then for good measure I embedded it again, and again. But I over did it so I deembedded and reembeded it a few times until I was certain of obtaining the correct code balance of embedation and deembedation. Don't try this at home kids. It's probably a violation of several provisions of the TOS. 

Ha! A scant 30 minutes I was into their posts.... reading their Top Secret communications with other members of this covert group as they again proved their Elite status by decribing their exploits getting on HellCom's public mailing list and ACTUALLY GETTING TO THE SPOT AD PAGE IN TRICKS. 

WHOA NELLY!
 
They again blew me away with their mastery of the Fine Art of Elite Hacking. I'm still shuddering in awe. 

As for 'lil 'ole me? How could I pull off this definitive coup? Cuz I'm a graduate of ZeroKook's Elite School of Fine Hacking.... and you'er not. 

Group: alt.discuss.n2play 
Date: Sun, Jan 24, 1999
From: ulTRAX@webtv.net
WHAT WERE THE BEST NG PRANKS?  

Poor META... I knew him well..... 
I'm looking for people's recollections on harmless old pranks that were pulled on unsuspecting NG readers. They ranged from my poorly received April Fools Disappearing Mail Trick to MirrororriMs inadvertant use of the Add Folder Code that created a folder saying "you've been hacked", to GoldenPost's post that caused anyone to read it to get a e-mail from WTV Japan. These are just a few I remember. Then there were the infuriating Client:Tourist Tricks... ah, the good ole days. 

Since this all may be included in my archives... please try to be specific who was to "blame", a date, and what exactly the Trick was. Thanks! 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Sun, Jan 24, 1999
From: ulTRAX@webtv.net
WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

This may be a bit off topic... but then I'm fond of saying that with WTV, Tricks are form of hacking.  Anyway, I'm not having a contest, the header is just to get attention. I'm looking for people's recollections on old pranks that were pulled on unsuspecting NG readers. They ranged from my April Fools Disappearing Mail Trick to Mirrors inadvertant use of the Add Folder Code. There was GoldenPost's post with the Letter from Phil..  So, pardon my being a bit off topic. I'm just working on the archives. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Sun, Jan 24, 1999
From: MNHIP@webtv.net 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

having html in our post in a NG with the <!-- code back in feb/march 97 There's was about 3 or 4 of us xgate,ēharš, mnwebhippie = me, & I think eprom too! 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Sun, Jan 24, 1999, 9:51pm  
From: J-BoNe23@webtv.net (JaSoN 23) 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

im gonna have to go with the email from japan. that was pretty cool the first time around. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Sun, Jan 24, 1999
From: ulTRAX@webtv.net 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

Some of you haven't been around long enough to remember some of the older tricks (prior to the summer 98 upgrade). I have a few at https://members.tripod.com/~ulTRICK/archive/oldtricks.txt.... but just remember that this is not a pranks page.... some "tricks" had other purposes. 



Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999, 3:20am (EST-1) 
From: Ecwfrk2@webtv.net (The Path Of Rage) 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

I found Mirror's (or was it MattMan? I suck at remembering things like that) adding a new folder to people's favs hilarious. It may have been inadvertant, but it all the funnier because of it.  A funny April Fools hoax was the WebTV After Dark program announcement. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999, 8:20am  
From: P0ETHORN@webtv.net ([]D (()) ((@ .) 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

I used to use what I called "forward disablers" which would keep people from bouncing my posts or emails. I would embed a webpage to my message with a JavaScript window.open URL in it that would send people to the final stage of adding users ...... ' You are adding user "LAMER"' and so on......  It worked great, only activated on the forward screen or the reply screen if the person had atachments on.  It was almost impossible to get around if you were a newbee or someone like Derek Vera. If you had a transition in your mail you had enough time to paste an address in the send box and force send it before the transition finished, but you had to be fast. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999, 8:44am  
From: MattMan69@webtv.net (Matt Man) 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

I would have to go with the client:tourist trick, that was always fun:) 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999
From: ulTRAX@webtv.net
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

The client:tourist trick was cool, but it really needed a good target URL.  I pulled two NG pranks using it.... the first was a tour of a NG front page. The second (and remember that a year ago Client:tourist and some of these URLs were still new... as was trying to string things together) was a tour of one's Personal Folder in FAVs. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999, 3:34pm  
From: Hijacker99@webtv.net (^^Jump^^or^^Die^^) 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

uLTRAX said the april fools prank was not universally appreciated. I thought it was one of the best. I remember freaking out. I thought he stole my mail. Until I hit my mail button and the shit returned. That still was one of the coolest pranks. I only wish we still could use metas in email. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999, 6:39pm (EST-2) 
From: ice-princess@webtv.net (ice-princess) 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG PRANK?   

I never really did pranks that much. But one that I did do to my friends was the wtv-setup:/accounts trick. I embed it into the body of my e-mail and sent it. When they open the message, in the e-mail below my sig. codes, it had the switch user screen, and it show all the user name, and you could switch user from the e-mail too. My friends thought that the webtv had fliped out on them. It was funny, until I told them that I did it to them. The code no long works that way anymore, because of the last update. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999, 9:13pm  
From: P0ETHORN@webtv.net ([]D (()) ((@ .) 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG    

I'm not sure if anyone knew about the use of JS in forward mail before me, about 6 or 7 months ago I was embeding a webpage to my sig that had a javascript password script on it, tried to access my write message screen and got a pop-up that said "there is now webpage or any other information available for the item chosen" ...or something like that. The pop-up kept activating continuously, rendering my terminal frozen. I thought ..... hmmm, then I embeded the page directly to my message and sent a copy to myself. I opened it ..... nothing. Then it hit me, duh, they took JS from mail but it still works on network pages. Then I started using all kinds of variations and came up with some creative ways to use it.  Around August I posted in alt.discuss.html taunting people to try and forward my mail (testing them out). I think it was ProfessorFrink who finally was able to forward it. He told me the way he did it was to put a transition in his mail before forwarding a message containing one of my bomb disablers and while the transition was activating he pasted a bunk email addy and hit his send button before the transition finished, allowing him to forward the message before the JS activated. There was an easier method than this, but most would'nt know the commands necessary for that method.  I never heard of any other use of JS in forward before I stumbled over it. Although, I believe someone posted before that with a method to get metas back in mail that had the same concept of using embed pages. That person I believe was MCmegamixer. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999, 11:15pm  
From: MattMan69@webtv.net (Matt Man) 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG    

I'm pretty sure it was TipTup that first discovered JS worked while forwarding a letter.. I remember him posting on it and it was mounths before your post "Try to bounce this" I could be wrong but thats how i remember it.. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Tue, Jan 26, 1999
From: ulTRAX@webtv.net 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG    

History's a bitch.... ain't it?  LOL 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Mon, Jan 25, 1999, 11:24pm (EST-1) 
From: MNHIP@webtv.net 
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST NG poe   

I also remember a guy dont know the name but he had the duplicate of a club webtv made & changed a few things around & embeded it into the Post for the NG this is before they moved this to alt.discuss in early 97 but he put down that we will get Java & Webphone service in summer of 97 this worked & it made a group wich usually had only 20 to 100 post at any time go up to the limit wich at the time was 500. This was so funny everybody played along no bothered to look at the URL wich was a angelfire url wich is no longer around but it was hilarious "Hey I should do that he he he" I would put on there we are getting MS smellvision you can smell the webpages with this new technology I really think there's people out there that would beleive this. 




Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking 
Date: Tue, Jan 26, 1999
From: ulTRAX@webtv.net
Re: WHAT WAS THE BEST MAIL PRANK   

Last March I received a letter from the sometimes secretive Hipstar. It was no big deal. We corresponded quite a bit... mostly on web privacy isssues.  But one letter was odd. So a few hours later I went back to reread it only to not be able to find what I was looking for. I looked through all the other letters. It was either gone.... or I was delusional.  I wrote Hipstar who laughed and explained.... The center part of the letter was an embed from Hip's HP. It's bgcolor and text matched perfectly that of the letter itself. Could this be a more secure way to communicate than mere e-mail? For days after, I found myself chuckling everytime I thought about it.  Last fall I used this Trick in the NG. In a thread in which we were giving thumbnail profiles of ourselves. I kept changing my bio from a used car salesman to a organic yak farmer.... then to an English teacher. 




Group: alt.discuss.n2play 
Date: Mon, Feb 8, 1999, 1:28am (EST-3) 
From: eprom@webtv.net 
Re: WHAT WERE THE BEST NG PRANKS?  

hehehehe.... I remember when I used a meta refresh with an animated gif of a green digital clock counting down from 9 and using a wav (the sound of a click) set to loop=9. When it hit zero.... it took you to a page that flashed KABOOM red on white and then white on red a couple of times as an explosion sound rang out. Then the box would shut off. I also remember a lady posted saying she spilled her coffee in the early morning when she clicked on my post. ;-)  




Group: alt.discuss.n2play 
Date: Mon, Feb 8, 1999, 1:51pm  
From: kaizer-soze@webtv.net (Kaizer Soze) 
Re: WHAT WERE THE BEST NG PRANKS?

eprom   I remember that prank well. LOL 
I remember thinking,"I sure wish this guy used his REAL name in his posts so that I could track him down and kill him". LOL


 
Group: alt.discuss.clubs.public.webtv.technical.ultrax Date: Fri, Nov 10, 2000
From: ulTRAX@webtv.net
THE CRUELEST OF JOKES

Back in Feb 98 I got into a rather heated debate about SIGS.... I know, it's difficult for anyone to believe I'd get into an argument with anyone. 

Some days into this debate I got some PO bombs by mail. The first one was a dud. The second one worked. Both were titled "Whats up d00d?" 

These were the days before anyone had a bomb forwarding code... so I couldn't get the name on the second letter, or forward it to abuse. 
So I went back to the NG debate until I saw a similar use of the term "d00d" by one of the most rabid pro-SIGers. Was it him? It was the right time zone. 

I plotted my revenge. 

The next day I went to DEMO and mailed both users a letter with the word "d00d" in the title just to let him know it was from me. I figured if he opened it he'd do so from his disposable user. 
In each letter was a note to kiss his files goodbye. Embedded was an elaborate "bomb" made up of two long META code sequences. But I made a tiny, but deliberate, mistake in the code, something I knew he'd pick up on. It was enough so that the META command could never have worked even if the codes were real. But they seemed they could delete all his mail and FAV folders... then add a folder calling him an asshole. 

No one really knew the real codes to any of these functions back then so he'd never know I was bluffing. It went something like this: 
  
I knew he would bounce the letter and get the code. In fact I wanted him to... but I did not want to make it easy. 
Back then we could get sig code by mailing a letter back to ourselves with "listing" added to our sig. To block this people would add a tag like "/listing". 
Others tags like "plaintext" were just being discovered. I left that door open for him. 
Being a lame bomber he would have believed he hit the mother lode... an a-bomb of letter bombs... if only he could get them to work. 
Letting him waste his time was a much better revenge than any lame PO bomb retaliation would have been. 
Around April Fools I wrote him to let him know it was a joke. 
The moral of the story is sometimes the best "bombs" are psychological.