Part 2
Many of us don’t know that before Internet era there were a lot of different networks for users. The best example is FIDONET.
FIDONET took ages! It was rather interesting. Can you remember meetings of pointers where you could exchange files, disks and books. One of the jokes was to give a boose to sysop.
At the first sight it was just ordinary parties
)) BUT NO! It meant more!That is how our conference mails looked like
What we can say about FIDO? It is GLOBAL forum where you can get messages like an e-mail with mass reply.
GoldED=) Not everyone can remember and even don’t know what it means =)
The basis of all was OS MS-DOS 6.22
Once at the meeting of pointers I was given credentials (from the University). Access to the Internet was available for teachers – 90 hours per month. During the lessons I had 4 credentials and it provided MFA (multi-factor authentication). To check the hour balance you should enter private account of the teacher (the same credentials). The main miracle happened at the party held in my house!
My first meeting with the Internet took place at the library having checked in the month before. We were given 30 minutes and so huge book (below you can see)
It was a search engine of that time=) Yellow pages =) first you watch subject, then – sites =)
I had a great party at my place with trial to enter the Internet. Modem pull consisted of 10 telephones which were always engaged. Only in 5 hours we managed to get through and then… Things happened!!!
Rambler search engine! It was the first Russian search engine; you won’t believe it – but it was found before Google. So at last, the Internet was connected. In 3 minutes we were given the results of our search requests – to download music - 2 minutes and a lot of sites. And we really did it!!!
- Only you don’t surf much – said the person who gave me credential.
....I promised
First of all, I was occupied with chats. At that time it was krovatka.ru – chat on HTML with different rooms for communication. The possibility of communicating with a person who was very far from me pleased me a lot. I spent 5 hours to download music (only one track). It was really a great idea to use ReGET that let me continue downloading the file if Internet was disconnected.
We could be disconnected from the Internet for 10 times within 1 hour and only in 5 or 6 hours we got it again. Besides, my relatives needed telephone too.! The line was engaged by modem. When I used Internet I had to not let them use the telephone (not to interrupt connection) - there were a lot of quarrels =)
The time went on. In 1999 the first magazine HACKER was issued which was the alternative to sites intel and computer journals.
One of my friends brought video with HACKER. Our Fido friend told us about Kevin Mitnik.
And we were on the wave!!! First of all I decided to upgrade hardware. I earned money from
selling credentials to 10 people and the rest part was given by my parents. I upgraded all – from monitor to such features as TV and FM Tuners.
It was really cool at that time:
CPU Celeron 400 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 16 MB audio card with 3D accelerator, 2 hard disks (2,5 each), TV and FM with remote control, external modem 56600 Akorp (Ukrop), 14 inches half flat monitor. Speakers were very loud. Mother was crazy from them. So using all above mentioned I just wanted to BECOME A HACKER! Wanted very much. This very question I asked the search engine:
And, of course, I got a lot of answers!
The very good example of Hack portal of that time:
All you needed just to copypaste.
Provider has UNIX. It should be compromised through the LAN port. Then steal file PASSWD! Done! Good luck!
Or
Download my super utility – it is a program to hack a provider! Click START and all credentials would be yours!
I downloaded, hacked, and then I had to change guaranteed hard disk. So, I didn’t download it any more.
Requesting for Hacker I got different utilities such as Win nuke.
Entering the address of University I clicked NUKE and with regret thought about apocalypses that happened there:
I saw it in the following way:
Should I explain how it really was? =) it was the way I hacked half the Internet and went to bed proudly. We learned to make mail bombs (you just send a file on e-mail, the person downloads, launches and it blocks the whole disk). We uploaded viruses Win9x.CIH on BBC site. Then on FidoNet we read complaints and laughed greatly at it. I got to know Windows 98 and suddenly was out of real life almost for 2 years. Yes, there are situations in our life…. But it was only the beginning of the story.
to be continued
Taken from C чего начать свой путь? FIDONET