Tech Confessions?

[Pak_Track]

We've all screwed up at some point in our tech-lives, or have a deep dark secret, such as, using Internet Explorer for some time.
I thought it would be fun to get them off of our chests.
Mine:
-I used IE7 for a period of 2 years, when I was little
-I once set a hard drive on fire, still haven't figured out how.
-I once set a PSU on fire, still haven't figured out how.
-I actually thought Windows Vista looked good when it came out
-I was once afraid of downloading anything for fear of viruses. Even a fucking Shockwave Player.
The best:
-I once got scared because my PC shut down due to an overheat, I started shutting it off, every 10 minutes and allowing it to cool down. I ended up damaging the motherboard, but thankfully, it was in warranty.

[d4rkcat]

-In the days of dial up modems I once spent 48 hours downloading a direct download pirated iso of Windows XP. Never used it as double clicking the iso didn't work for some reason.
-Around the same time I downloaded Back orifice Sub7, and ran server.exe. Didn't get why nothing happened.
-I used to program in Visual Basic.
-I once made a "encrypter" in Visual Basic that just substituted each character in a plaintext with a random choice of 6 different 10 digit numbers. I thought I was a badass and had invented an uncrackable code.
-I have infected more windows machines than I care to remember by installing cracked software.
-I once accidently 'rm -rf /' as root. I have no idea what happened I think I was typing too fast.
-I completely bricked my parents Windows 98 machine by trying to install DirectX so I could play a game. It was the only PC in my house and they used it for work.

That's all I can think of for now but I will edit when I remember more. (There must be more)

[Kulverstukas]

Those are hard to remember... but I burned 2 flash drives when assembling a new computer - I mixed the wires for front USB port and when I wanted to boot from a flash drive, it got really hot and didn't boot thought it was a faulty flash drive, so I tried again. After second attempt I took a look at the wires and facedesk'd myself kek.

Gonna update when I'll remember more.

[Pak_Track]

How is it possible to install any USB F/Panel connectors wrongly? I mean, it's just, far out.

[mushinz]

-I have started crying when verification link for facebook didn't work 
-My first "hacking":
Mother has pasword protected the PC so me and my brother wouldn't play games all night long...so we just had to break the password somehow ofc..
First we scribbled the A4 paper with pencils and placed it under the keyboard and we thought when she pressed the something on the keyboard it would leave the trace and we would unscramble the result to get the password, we tried it and it worked ^^
but unfortunately we didn't turn on the PC and when she tried to type the password nothing has showed on the screen and we were busted...damn she has beaten the shit out of us 


p.s. sorry for bad english 

[Kage]

Lol,
one time I made a Perl script that had a really bad & probably endless loop in it, within seconds my hard drive was making loud TAK TAK TAK noises so I quickly shut it down. When rebooting I discovered it melted my dual screen into one big screen -.- . I was unable to undo it.


Another time I managed to kill our only (windows) pc by doing a hard shutdown while it was booting. I was too uneducated at the time to repair it :/


Also one time I somehow managed to switch the kernels of my slackware & ubuntu effectively breaking my computer. My awesome tech nephew had to come fix it.

[Spectrum_963]

Ooh, this seems fun, so I'll add some of my own moments of glory;

-For a VERY long time I honestly thought IE7 was the best browser in the world and that's why it's Window's default browser. Being the best OS and all.
- I think I was four - I had recently heard that human bodies could be electronic conductors, and one day when my dad pulled our computer out of the plug for some reason, I crawled under the desk, grabbed the end of the cable and tried to stick my pinkie into the plug. Thankfully someone caught me before I could kill myself.
- When I was 11-ish, I thought I could be Mark Zuckerburg by learning HTML. Only. I also thought I was an uber h4xor 'cause I knew what 'OS' was. No joke.
-Didn't set anything on fire, but I once DoS-ed myself. I still don't know how I pulled that one off in particular.

On a side note, I once did that 'rm -rf /' thing too cause I saw it someplace and "wanted to see what it did". Thankfully, I didn't have the user permissions to do so, so no harm was done.

[Pak_Track]

@Geoff The 3rd and 4th ones are actually pretty cool.
The 2nd reminded me, I salvaged the fan from the PSU, and used it to ventilate a cardboard home I built for my cat He never even went in.

@Spectrum_963
Know Technical terms = 1337 hax0r

This is really entertaining

[Spectrum_963]

Lol I know. I got that wrong on purpose.
But thanks anyhow.

[madf0x]

I got a few from back when I knew jack shit. And why I say I got lucky with some of my newbie fuckups

1.) Learn about keyloggers, want to try one out, download some random one off some site, run it(somehow managed to configure it properly) and walked away from the home computer. Cue later that afternoon dad hops on, 'hey what the fuck is this trojan.w32.blah?'. I look at the screen and voila antivirus caught the keylogger I downloaded. Lied out my ass and said 'I dont know but antivirus caught it so it should be fine in quarantine.' It worked, and later that night I hopped on and let antivirus have an exception for the logger. Worked smoothly for several months.

2.) Speaking of dad, one night I had just learned about network scanning. Thought Id try it out and decided to start off with a ~50,000 host random nmap scan with the works. Figure Id check in on it morning time, so I minimized it(didn't know about nmaps output options at the time). Not only did Dad get to it first, open up the windows, he actually googled the damn thing. Ensue huge rage fest as my dad only saw it as a 'hacker' tool. Didn't help that some airliners got caught in said random scan(oh boy did he browse through my results) and my dad worked as a civilian contractor for a naval base. You try explaining how hacking can be good when youre still basically a skid and barely know the ethics behind the industry to justify yourself

3.) Learn a bit about mitm(theme going on here eh?) and decide to try it out...at my local library. I waltz in, sit down at one of tables reserved for laptop users, log on to the wifi, then proceeded to fire up ettercap's gui. What happened next was 30 sweaty minutes as I try in vain to repair the network as the entire library internet access, even the desktops on the LAN, is entirely borked to all hell and back. Library workers are running around trying to fix everything, users are complaining, and I'm sitting there, noticing the camera pointed in my direction for the first time ever. Somehow managed to reverse my damage and stayed for an extra ten minutes to not look suspiciously frantic.

[Pak_Track]

Yeah, my mom gets hyped up whenever I mention anything about the cyber-world, and I have to listen to lessons on e-safety and that we're always being tracked and stuff.
Apart from that, the 3rd one is awesome
+cookie for the laugh.

[Syntax990]

Here is a few dark secrets of that I can remember:

• I used to use hide-my-ass proxy for web browsing. I told all my friends at school that it will hide your illegal activities (knowing full well that it offers little to no protection against the law). Eventually, my undeveloped brain realized that only the specific web browser was having it's traffic routed. All my torrent downloading and Music theft was not being protected and the slowness of web browsing was a complete waste of time.
  
• I used to ZIP my files and add a password to them. All my USB's data was stored in a ZIP file called 'data.zip'. This was my strategy against malware or hackers... My brother ridiculed me for my pathetic tactic and simply cracked the zip file in under an hour. He got the file without my permissionand cracked it then showed me all my files on his machine. From now on, I encrypt the entire usb.
  
• I used to use whois and find out shit about peoples webpages. Acting like an expert when I told them their phone number and address.
  
• I used Microsoft windows for the first 16 years of my life. During that time, I hated all Apple products. The more time I spend in unix-like environments, the more I like apples shit.
  
• I used to love Half-Life 2, and other games all based on the Source engine. In the days of 2006-2008, I was modding a variety of games such as Half-Life. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Command and Conquer Red alert 2 : Yuri's Revenge. I spent countless amount of hours trying to integrate other peoples mods from Half-Life 2 into Counter Strike Source and visa versa. I found myself adding NPC's into Half Life 2 Death-match. Me and my brother was playing death-match with zombies. I considered making a full release of the mod we both made, until i discovered Gmod...

This is only a few of the many stupid things I have done.

[Kulverstukas]

How is it possible to install any USB F/Panel connectors wrongly? I mean, it's just, far out.

It's possible if you mix the + and - wires, then apparently the polarity flips and that's how you fry a flash drive

Edit: here's some more

* Back in the days when floppies were used for data transfer, I grabbed a copy of Sub7, infecting myself several times in the process and having to listen to lectures from my dad how this is hacking and how this is illegal, I eventually made a working server.exe and copied that onto a floppy. Being overly excited I told my friend about it and we decided to go infect the local library to keylog Runescape passwords. That didn't work because the librarian would always take a look at my screen, so after like half-hour of being nervous like hell I just walked out.

* Back when Runescape had simple graphics and was actually awesome, I used to play it with my friends day and night.

* When I got my first computer and TurboPascal was introduced very briefly in school, I started learning it on my own, knowing of no other programming languages then. I got the basics down and was able to code much better than any of my classmates and I felt so awesome, so l33t you can say

[Kulverstukas]

Disclaimer: All of my stories are from the days when I knew jack shit about any of this.

* I once ripped out a NiMh battery pack from a toy car that had no charger, found a loose USB cable somewhere and thought I could make that battery pack charge. I spun the wires together (according to color) and plugged it in. What happened next was a short circuit and I almost fried a motherboard lol.

[Pak_Track]

I wrapped the four cables around each other inside the USB cable and created a cable that turned any computer once plugged in. I shortened the cable and had a small USB that would cut the power of any machine it was plugged into.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Now, none of our secrets are current. I thought I'd start.

I'm still using a CRT Monitor and PS/2 membrane keyboard. (The keyboard is somewhat awesome)