1202
Null terminator (backend.xylight.dev)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] 180 points 3 years ago (6 children)

Right, So I actually did something similar. On some version of windows I noticed that ctrl-backspace was adding another character to the password, instead of deleting it. So I included it in my password. Then I updated to a new version of windows and got locked out since they updated the password backend to where it would actually delete the password instead of a adding the character, so I had no way of typing out my password. Ended up just nuking the computer.

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  • [–] 54 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Could have just researched what character was being inserted by the ctrl backspace and then used the keyboard to insert the character from its ascii or unicode code to login and then changed your password before nuking your computer

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  • [–] 41 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    But with what computer?!

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Your phone maybe?

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  • [–] 25 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Your what? Like those things with the dial that are attached to the wall? How are you meant to do it with that?

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  • [–] 30 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Easy. You whistle in binary and say modem noises. The operator will patch you through to the internet.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I'm in.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I genuinely can't tell if you and the person you responded to are doing a bit and committing to it, or are genuinely referring to:

    Phreakers

    Making weird modem noises to hack phones will always be the funniest 90's hacker thing I've ever heard.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Hey, it worked, okay lol? And we were in the 70’s.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I was a 90's kid. Making weird noises in the phone was magic to me.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    I know a lot of people get weird about it, but the Anarchist's Cookbook had TONS of info on phreaking and exploiting telephone systems. It wasn't just about how to make napalm and tennis ball bombs (but that shit was hella fun, too).

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I'm sure this version of windows was before phones had screens attached, and likely before the internet was ubiquitous. They likely had one computer and would have had to go somewhere else to look it up if that was even an option.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Or just cleared the SAM password altogether. Windows is trivially easy to break into if you have physical access and the volume isn't encrypted.

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  • [–] 35 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Was that the same version of Windows where you could click "cancel" to bypass the login prompt?

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  • [–] 26 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    early win98 and i think even into second edition you could just click the close window x button on the login window and it would just dump you onto the desktop. my parents thought adding a password would stop late night gaming.... nope worked till i got discovered one fateful nigbt and i was grounded till i revealed how i found out what the password was.

    was eye opening for my father who then started just taking the power cords off the monitor and psu.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    My parents had the power cord in locked box, so you need a key to turn the computer on, which only they have.
    Me and all my siblings learnt to pick lock.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    What did you use as tools, or was it a masterlock?

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  • [–] 20 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    I know, this is easier said than done for someone unfamiliar with this stuff, but maybe still good to know that this is an option in future:

    You can prepare a "Linux Live USB" and select in the BIOS that it should boot off of that.
    It'll start a complete OS off of that USB, so you can access the hard drive (assuming you didn't enable disk encryption) and at the very least backup your files, or sometimes even resolve whatever keeps you from accessing Windows.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Remember: Those were probably the times of a single computer at home and having a spare laptop somewhere ready for that is not the default.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago

    Those were the times when I had to pull out my hard drive, ride my bike to my best mate's house, and plug it into their PC so I could finish up a report due the next day. All because Windows 95 didn't shut down cleanly and refused to boot.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I did actually remember that, but figured, they must have had some way of reinstalling Windows, too.

    I guess, though, they might have had a physical Windows install disk at home. So, yeah, would have had to prepare a Linux Live CD before disaster struck...

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    CD? Windows 98 first edition was released on floppies. And Linux was not some simple thing. Red hat hadn’t even created yum and Debian hadn’t even created apt.

    The late 90’s was a chore of library visits and 14.4k baud XModem transfer interruptions.

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  • [+] 10 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    This sort of nonsense right here is why infosec people warn about having physical access to machines

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    It’s not just because of nonsense, it’s more that it doesn’t really matter what you do - the only thing stopping someone with physical access to your machine is their level of determination.

    At some point, there’s no stopping the laws of physics. Your data is physically stored there. You can do a lot to make it really difficult to access it, but the best you can do is full disk encryption with a sufficiently strong key, and only store that key on external hardware that isn’t accessible to the attacker.

    Even then, you better make sure that your encryption key wasn’t hanging around cached anywhere in memory before you shut down your computer.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    this i do all the time. you can even make a persistance on the drive so its not just like a fresh install every boot. really nice if you wont have access to internet on the host hardware so if you need sometool inparticular you can have it installed already

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