Today, when I take another memory pie off the shelf, the Internet has become something taken for granted, like water in a tap. A generation of always-on Wi-Fi was born and grew up, which did not see pictures loaded from the bottom up, did not write ATL0 to the modem terminal, and at the mention of the “naked grandfather” experiences completely different emotions.
And how wonderful it is! In a couple of decades, progress swept the planet, evolving from telephone noodles and coax webs to powerful fiber optic rhizomes; from bytes barely sucked out of the air to gigabit channels to each apartment. Own, always-on Internet terminal lies in the pocket even of any guest worker who does not find it unusual to regularly communicate via video link with relatives in a mountain village. Could we have imagined this twenty, thirty years ago? But we are still moving on: after some time, the satellite network will cover the entire planet, and communication terminals can be placed directly in our brains. I don’t presume to judge how this will change the life of all mankind, but I’m already preparing to drill a hole in my skull.
But I turn my eyes to the past and fish out a considerable text for you for Friday coffee, seasoned with crackers of the Internet, with sauce from cybercrime stories and served to the whistle into the phone at 14400.
First click on the web
I can’t say that I was among the pioneers of the Internet: for this achievement, I hatched at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Although I dreamed of computers literally from an early age, I probably learned about global networks already in my youth. But that was entirely theoretical knowledge: I imagined that the Internet was cool, that you could chat there, browse sites and watch porn. But how to get it all for yourself - there was no idea; and where to find out about it in our outback - too.
Only in the year XNUMX did I see the Internet with my own eyes.
Just then, all sorts of political porridge began to brew, which we slurp to this day. “Unity” appeared, which later mutated into a party of crooks and thieves, and from the very beginning its leaders tried to get themselves a personal Komsomol, into the city cell of which I ran into. Perhaps I need to remember this with shame and regret, but then I did not think about any politics, and indeed - who knew? Moreover, everything was fun and very cool: some events were constantly arranged, and genuine friendship and mutual support reigned among the guys. Well, and most importantly, there was a headquarters there, which, during non-working hours, was given to us for uncontrolled tearing to pieces.
There, in the headquarters, there was a computer, always occupied by the third "heroes" - except for those moments when it was possible to get money to access the network! It was a whole sacred ceremony: as if the bell ringing before the prayer, the modem played the magic melody of the connection, and when it calmed down, it showed the miraculous icon of the established connection in the tray of the ninety-eighth Windows! Here I took communion for the first time: someone's name day was coming up, under which the idea was born to download and print a postcard as a gift. For that time and place, it was a really cool and original idea!
So the first thing I saw on the net was a site with stupid postcards that didn’t impress me at all.
Exposure to what is happening
In the same 13, on December XNUMX, I got my own computer. I remember not only the date, I remember the entire config that fit in a typical case of those times - you know these beige monotonous boxes:
Not mine, but very similar. Slot plugs were always broken out for better ventilation, for the same reason the casing was often removed. The photo was found on the net, but then most of the cars looked plus or minus like this.
The computer was bought, as expected, "for study." My parents understood that apart from IT, I was not good for anything else, and they really tried to provide me with the conditions for entering “a programmer”. But the further - the more they doubted the decision. Very soon, classic stories began with hiding power wires and threats to “throw the plumbing to hell” - otherwise I simply could not come off the wonderful machine. It's funny to remember this after dad got hooked on solitaire: we switched roles and I had to hide the wires.
I somehow did. The first student booze died down, new acquaintances were formed, and it turned out that I was not the only one who turned. We, the provincial geeks, wanted to join the network, and if the distances did not even allow us to think about a twisted pair cable, then the telephone was then in every apartment.
All I needed was a modem. The cheapest Lucent Agere Winmodem then cost exactly 500 rubles - my student budget for several months. I could not afford to do part-time work during my studies, I was ashamed to ask my parents ... but I was just lucky. Going to the university for the hated first couple of physical education, I saw a five-hundred-ruble bill in the entrance! Lying on the dirty floor, she radiated an unearthly radiance, beckoned and promised me a dream come true ...
In the evening, I honestly told my parents about the find, preparing for its expropriation to the family budget. But dad reasoned that one of the factory workers who celebrated the pay had lost the banknote; the sympathy between the drunken lumpen and my own son played in my favor, the treasure was not confiscated. The very next day I bought myself a coveted device.
Beep beep, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh there motherfucker! Photo from the network.
Although such softmodems were considered “inferior” due to the software implementation of signal processing, this PCI model worked much better on our lines than expensive external modems. I compiled drivers for it under Red Hat and started it in BeOS, I flashed it on V.92 and tuned the connection with AT commands. He provided me with hours and days of sitting in free provider chats, playing Starcraft on IPX, he worked as a fax and answering machine, and, of course, brought all the joy of the then Internet. I hope a little that somewhere in the parental house this scarf is still lying, although there is no use for it now, except to stick it into a retro system unit to complete the kit.
A web covers the city
With access to networks in our town it was so-so. FIDO has already died out, there were no people nearby for locals, but dial-up Internet access was provided by as many as three providers: the stepson of the soviet Volgatelecom (aka “dgrad”), the progressive “Variant-Inform” (“vinf”), and the third one that didn't work in my area. Access cost about a dollar per hour, plus or minus five rubles, depending on the provider and the time of day, and at first it was a whole problem to even pay for it. It was necessary to go to the subscriber's cash desk and deposit money into the account there; after a couple of years, Winf had cards with codes that made the replenishment process more or less convenient.
The quality of the connection itself danced strongly from the PBX and the quality of telephone noodles. 33600 bps was considered a very good speed, more often it was 28800 or even 9600 bps. That's about 15 minutes to download one megabyte of data! But even such crumbs were enough for a very leisurely browsing of the then web, and for IRC chats it was already quite enough. More strained disconnections, busy phone and the need to pay for the time. And in general - to pay ...
But we also had a freebie, as without it! Both "dgrad" and "vinf" gave the opportunity for free guest access, as if to check the account. "Dgrad" limited the guest session by time, "vinf" - by the number of free modems in the pool. And those small free resources available from "freebies" one way or another became the refuge of all modem owners in the city.
Winf was especially good here: a forum, IRC, and a grid of their games (about which I ). A very large community grew up around this and lasted for many years; online dating turned into real life, where the freedom inherent in network communication was also transferred. People of different ages and beliefs not only found a common language, but also behaved as equals. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!
Ha, what am I pouring? Inside and outside, there were constant srachs and scandals, real network wars were arranged with harassment, showdown and even scuffle, intrigues were spinning and all kinds of alcoholic debauchery took place. In general, there was enough of everything - and that was why it was interesting.
The least shocking photo of related events of those times from the personal archive of the author.
In passing I will mention that just at that time mobile phones began to appear, and with them GPRS. Butt Cutter, with its payment for traffic, was convenient for constant communication in ICQ, although for a long time the network coverage left much to be desired (and not everyone could afford the device itself). A nostalgic story about the then mobile phones and the subculture around them, I sawed in a separate post at .
Absolutely the chosen lucky ones had satellite Internet, going as an appendage to the “dish”. Of course, it only worked for receiving, a separate channel was needed to send data (the same GPRS was ideal in this regard). Although the cost of satellite traffic went through the roof, the owners of the “plates” enjoyed free “fishing” - catching files in the general data stream. When some Turk downloaded a movie for himself, the signal with this data went to the entire reception area, it only remained to isolate the file, which was done by special software. It was the "fishermen" who had the wildest porn and the earliest pirated releases, and they had to go if you needed to download some serious amount of data.
Because even a satellite channel was cheaper than going to the "Internet cafe" of the same "Volgatelecom"; I was somehow swindled there for several hundred rubles for a leaked hundred meters; not only that, they recorded the disc crookedly for me, and the files at home were not readable.
Fakin shield
However, “dgrad” had one plus: its billing was full of holes like jeans of modern fashionistas. The password for the modem connection was always the same as in the billing, and the login most often coincided with the subscriber's telephone number. With this knowledge, it was possible to call the guest pool, brute forcing yourself a freebie, which I was not the only one doing. There was no protection against enumeration, holes were not patched - the provider did not care, because the client, from whose account the money had gone, would probably bring more.
Now, of course, I would think - how good and legal is it to do so? And I would admit that it is bad and illegal; but at that age, I had a slightly different view of such things in my head, fueled by coolhacker stories from a well-known and regularly read magazine.
I grew up with my mother as a coolhacker! Photo again from the Internet, but who did not have such a pile?
Returning to the cybercriminal past: the most interesting thing was that any number of users could connect under one account at the same time, as long as there was money on the account. But how many of them, money, does a private trader have? Well, fifty rubles, well, a hundred. Another thing is a company account with thousands and tens of thousands, and even with an overdraft! This is what the story is about now.
Somehow, among the students, a rumor began to spread about the magical login of the Shield company with an infinite amount of money in the account. The rumor was once confirmed: on one of those same local forums, these login / password were thrown in (some very simple pair, like shield / shield). And there were tens of thousands of money in this account.
Oh, what an expanse began! Probably the whole city was sitting under the “free” login. I also got dirty a couple of times out of greed and curiosity, but I wasn’t particularly afraid to get burned (the numbers of our PBX were not determined by the city, they should not have been determined by the provider either). However, I knew for sure that some comrades had seized upon and used this account continuously.
It was interesting to watch the situation. For several months, the same thing was repeated: the account was driven into the red, after a while it was replenished to the previous values, but again not for long. Only after a significant amount of time had passed, the password was changed at the account - and the city was covered with a veil of sadness, in which it remained, thanks to your obedient servant, for a short time.
Of course, brute-forcing this account would be XNUMX% stupid, I didn’t do it. More for fun, I tried to log in with the password “qwerty” - yes, damn it, it came up! Puffed up, I (anonymously, of course) leaked the password to the city's IRC ...
The second wave was not long in coming. Freeloaders, starving for a couple of days, discarding all caution, rushed into the network. No reasoning about the fawn did not admonish these stupid ones, but in vain - later it turned out that after changing the password, the firms Have begun to suspect something, they turned to the provider, which only then turned on the logging of connection numbers.
About a month later, the account was closed for good. An investigator arrived from the Ulyanovsk department "K", someone was summoned for interrogation (which shocked the parents unimaginably), there were rumors that someone's computer was even confiscated. After the appearance of such shocking news, a literal agony began in the urban network society: everyone, at least half a bump, used an account and was now afraid of punishment.
I experienced the situation without much fear, feeling in all this some touch of hacker romance. But, of course, I deleted all the "pale" software, hid the disks of the "Everything for a hacker" series behind a cabinet, tore out the modem and hid it even further. Even my father taught me what to say in case they come to me somehow.
And I started doing my research.
It was easy. The "shield-users", mad with fear, easily gave up all connections, I quickly traced the chains through which the ill-fated login was transmitted even before the exposure in public.
The author is investigating (restored image).
In the center of the web were three freshmen, one of whom leaked access. I called each of them, punching the phones through my man in the dean's office; when I called, I introduced myself as the same Ulyanovsk investigator, asking me to tell everything without concealment. It was possible to expose me elementarily, but fear has big eyes - none of the students suspected anything, all three went to a “deal with the investigation”, handing over each other, as they say, with giblets. Mitnick would be proud of me!
Unfortunately, I did not record the conversations, but at least I found out that the password was leaked through the fourth freshman - a relative of the director of that very company. He fraternally shared the password with his friends, and what the three know, the whole city knows.
I am sure that if I was able to find out, then a real trained investigator knew about it already on the second morning. Here, it seems, the fairy tale is over, but it was too early to relax the rolls, because people were still called in for interrogations.
An amusing meeting of “anonymous freeloaders” was organized: everyone knew each other, if not personally, then through network communication, but pretended to be here by chance. Someone brought dad, someone brought mom, someone brought a lawyer.
The lawyer, a sedate and reasonable woman, carefully listened to all the facts, according to which it turned out that the account was originally published voluntarily, for which the distributor should bear the blame. With those who freeloaded after changing the password, the situation was not so unambiguous, but even here the lawyer advised to wait for accusations and evidence, saying that now the investigator is trying to intimidate everyone. The recommendation was obvious: wait, either self-dissolving, or specifics.
Everyone agreed with this. Everyone except Vova's mother.
You know, there is this type of guys brought up in same-sex families by their mother and grandmother. They are usually very infantile and dependent due to overprotection, often lazy, and never notice that something is wrong with them. Do you remember the cartoon about Vova Sidorov?
“And a loaf at the ready, when it gets tired, it eats!”
Our Vova could have successfully starred in that cartoon as himself. Of course, it is unlikely that the army would have compensated him for the lack of his father's upbringing, but it would certainly have pushed some foundations of independence. We do not know this, because Vova "entered" the university.
So, Vovin's mother was hysterical that her son would be expelled because of all this, put in jail or even taken to the army, and in the army he would be eaten and raped. And if so, then she will immediately go to the investigator, and will beg him to solve the case amicably. It was not possible to convey the arguments of reason to the wild woman, and Vova himself listened to his mother's usual tantrums with a completely absent look, as if it did not concern him.
The lawyer then offered one of the more adequate people to accompany the lady. I volunteered: firstly, I could not miss this, and secondly, it was possible to find out some new circumstances of what was happening.
The investigator greeted us with open arms and joked that we would be treated with indulgence for surrendering. He showed some printouts, as if logs of numbers from the pool. And after psychological treatment, he offered to solve the matter amicably, indemnifying the company for the alleged damage of several hundred thousand rubles.
Vovina's mother agreed to this immediately, without discussion. Moreover, she prepared in advance for just such a result, urgently selling some property, almost an apartment. A very small part of the amount was then reimbursed to her by the other participants in the muddied, but most of them froze.
At the end of this story, we met with the firms, Vova's mother gave the money, the investigator tore up the application, everyone dispersed.
Vova, of course, was still expelled due to complete academic failure. He recovered, and flew out again more than once, so it seems that he did not get beyond the second year - but he was fine.
Freebie never changes
If you think that what happened taught someone something, then I will laugh in your face right through the monitor. Before the “Shield” story had time to be forgotten, another one happened, not much inferior to it.
Here you need to know this: in addition to prepaid subscriber access, Volgatelecom had a postpaid long-distance modem pool in Ulyanovsk. A convenient thing, if there is no money on the account right now, but you are ready to pay double the cost for the connection.
And again, a stuffing about a freebie appears on the local forum: a login for this pool, under which you can only enter your own BT network (Volzhans, does your chest ache at the word “simix”?), But it’s free, something like the usual already us guest access. And the Volgatelecom network is hundreds and thousands of ADSL subscribers, with a bunch of FTP, chats, p2p, and, what the hell is not joking, ICQ gateways! In the eyes of freeloaders, it was no worse than the normal Internet.
Of course, one could go to the tariff section of the BT website and find all the information about this access there. It was cheap, three to four times cheaper than the classic time clock, but still not free. Therefore, the first time the login was used quite carefully. But the bills did not come for a month, another ... The people fell for it: almost the entire city got hooked on the “free LAN”, using it was something taken for granted. Busy phones around the clock, gigabytes of funny jokes downloaded, complete digital expanse! And it would be fine if there were children - no, the adult contingent was also enough.
As you might guess, BT handled the situation in their own style. About six months after the stuffing, people received bills immediately for the whole time. The total figures there were such that no “shields” could dream of; darkness descended on the glorious city of Dimitrovgrad, howls and groans filled the walls of its dwellings!
Since I myself was careful this time and did not get into trouble, I watched history more from the side. But the story was sucked up in the local press and, of course, in the local network: more than a thousand people got divorced - and I can’t name the situation anything else - this stirred up the public. It seems that for some time there were trials and buttings, the phones were turned off for the debtors, and they cursed the “vobla”; in the end, the parties reconciled - part of the debt was written off, part was reimbursed by the clubbing.
On the other hand, I saw directly another part of the events that did not get into the newspapers. Those who flew into the money really needed a guilty one: the author of the initial stuffing was ideal for this role. His address was figured out, and an initiative group of punishers went to arrange a lynching. In real life, the formidable network warrior turned out to be a dull schooltron who was disdained to beat.
Adventures with "vobla"
By the year 2005, Volgotelecom ADSL had reached our city, and at the first opportunity I connected to it. It's not that we didn't have other xDSL providers until then, but private individuals couldn't afford their services. It was easier with BT in this regard: although the cost of connection and traffic was very noticeable, the local resources mentioned just above were really free. Moreover, the presence of such resources was almost directly announced in advertising - they say, connect, and our three-terabyte FTP-vareznik will be available to you!
That's what people got involved with. On the "fex" - that same file hosting service - there really was everything that the soul of the then nerd could wish for. Images of fresh games, movie rips, broken software, muzlo, pron! What for with such wealth, do you need the Internet at all? Of course, some ridiculous amount of external traffic was included in the subscriber, but on top of it you had to pay according to tricky schemes, depending on who BT had peering with. Some resources were cheap, and on some you could fly a few rubles per megabyte. Around the "fex" and "outside" and there were the main seething.
Let's say, after you were lured by sweet advertising, you discovered that the file hosting service is, in general, illegal and officially such a resource does not exist. And if so, then its availability is not guaranteed. The server was constantly offline, and when it was up, it was impossible to work with it due to the number of users stuck to it. Once, some particularly smart client wrote a complaint to the leadership of VT: how, they say, so, they promised me warez and porn, where is it all? The admin got a stick (as if for hosting an illegal resource) and threatened to close the file hosting service.
But this was not an option either: the people went precisely to the “fex”! Then they did this: the number of public connections to the server was cut, sections with porn and warez were removed. But you could personally buy an account from the admin for permanent access without restrictions. But I don’t think that he managed to cash in on this - very soon the network was flooded with p2p services, in which you could download anything you wanted.
And here is another part of the constant network tantrums connected with p2p. The same torrents, if they are not limited in any way, will be downloaded from any peers that can be found via DHT. And as I mentioned, external traffic was dangerously expensive. And although there were detailed instructions on how to set up a firewall and a rocking chair for a local existence - who even reads these instructions? So every single day on the local forum there were lamentable topics “I got into traffic” / “I flew out into the open, my parents will kill me” / “I didn’t climb anywhere, for what ?!”. Many hit more than once, well, let's not blame them - ask yourself, could you even exist in such wildness?
After a couple of years, BT nevertheless began to introduce some kind of unlim. True, in order for this to happen, users really arranged flash mobs and rallies near the roach office. Can you imagine this?
Ulyanovsk on their knees pray for anlim.
Tearful complaints worked, but there would be no BT , be honest. The client was promised an access speed, say, in megabits, but in reality he received 128 kilobits at best. When the client complained, he received a reply: the speed was promised BEFORE a megabit, everything was done! Then this wiring just appeared, but very quickly it was adopted by literally all providers.
But that's not all! As soon as you managed to download a couple of gigabytes at this speed, the speed fell again and again, to a few kilobits. What waves of hatred this gave rise to - beyond words; sometimes hatred gave rise to complaints to the FAS, the department arranged an inspection, for the period of which VT removed all restrictions - and then turned the tap back on.
Ulyanovsk had to endure - but not Dimitrovgrad. The local admin either did not want to set limits, or the equipment did not allow it - but in our town everyone had their honest six to eight megabits even on the most cut-down unlimited tariffs.
But what if you didn't have the money for that? Well, if you had brains and no conscience, then you could pull off an operation to get yourself an external channel.
When connecting, all clients were given the same D-Link modem with outdated firmware. By default, the modem turned on in router mode, so its console and admin panel stuck out to the network. It was quite an elementary task to scan such modems on the network, it was already more difficult to brute-force access to the console, but it is also possible. But then it was already quite high aerobatics. Had:
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Log in to the modem and enter it into flashing mode. This opened a TFTP server on it.
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Instead of firmware, fill in the limited free space of the modem's flash memory with a proxy binary. The binary had to be written and compiled by oneself, or else one had to know where to get it.
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Move the uploaded file to /bin, give it permission to execute and set autorun in init.
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Reboot the modem to normal mode.
If everything was done correctly - you got yourself a hole outside, and the victim of the hack received an even more limited channel, at best. At worst - "fell on the outside."
To protect yourself from this misfortune, it was enough to put the modem into bridge mode, or, well, update the firmware - the update already had brute force protection. They said that later there were other ways of hacking, but I don’t know about this anymore - by that time I had moved to Samara, where there were already .
PS
After I told these stories in my , then received a couple of comments from a participant in those events. With his permission, I will supplement my story with them, they fit perfectly:
Before the advent of unlimiteds, BT also had such an unofficial hack - it was possible to register the forum IP address as a proxy, specifying port 80, and dangle externally using local traffic. When it fell off once again for some reason, someone called VT, complained and they closed the freebie for everyone, and the admin was even discharged with a lie. And the network gangsters really wanted to find this dude then and punish for such stupidity, even one pepper in ICQ offered me to go somewhere with someone to “show off”.
Well, and one more story, already personally mine: in the days of “before unlimited” I wrote a traffic meter, which counted (but did not block) the exterior in real time. And there was such a trick - a list of local IPs could be downloaded from the VT web page, an automatic updater for this case was built into the program. I even filed a website for the program, and wrote there like “a program for calculating traffic, counts external, lists for BT are configured.” And then she counted someone wrong, and that “someone” again did not find anything smarter than complaining to VT - like here the program is “your”, it doesn’t count correctly, return the babos! And BT has already written me threatening letters, like “what the fuck”. Well, I understood the signal, demolished the site, threw the source codes on the forum, like I'm not me and the hut is not mine.
I wonder if there is someone here who was sitting on Vinf, Dgrad, Simiks in those days? Or maybe you have your own online stories that are shameless to share? Maybe they dragged pwl from unclosed network shares in LAN? Scanned the provider's subnet, and then explained to the administrator? Did you spend sleepless nights chatting with dozens of the same crazy people?
Share your memories because it was great.
Source: habr.com