Subj : Beautiful hacks
To   : Bob Worm
From : Ben Collver
Date : Tue Oct 24 2023 11:23:54

  Re: Beautiful hacks
  By: Bob Worm to Ben Collver on Mon Oct 23 2023 20:51:32

BW> I'm sure there's some real nuisance value possible by adding one of
BW> those to an innocent looking file name, e.g. CONFIG[0xFF].SYS so that
BW> it looked like the file was there in a DIR listing but you would get a
BW> "file not found" any time you tried to view or manipulate it...

That would be a clever use of that 0xFF character.  :-)

The university admins in the 90's set up a system that used ghost to re
image each lab PC on reboot.  This was probably an effective mitigation
for these little nuisances.

I listened to a podcast by Jason Scott where he mentioned clever little
hacks and documents such as the anarchists cookbook.  He explained that
teens of that era did not want to actually construct bombs.  They lived
perhaps in oppressive environments and wanted to feel empowered.  These
documents and hacks felt empowering in a way.

BW> Quality use of DEBUG there, by the way :)

Thanks!  I like that DEBUG can take its commands from STDIN.  It can be
scripted from a batch file to patch binaries.

.