Yet another Hacker News

Major ICQ security hole (1998)

41 points sysoleg 2 days ago 21 comments

SillyUsername 2 days ago | parent

So this is how my low numbered account was stolen back in the day - thanks for sharing.

rashkov 2 hours ago | parent

Can’t believe I still remember my ICQ id

gersonazgo 1 hour ago | parent

I read your comment and realized I also do haha lol lfmao rofl

giantrobot 33 minutes ago | parent

Mine is seared into my brain. It's also cheating a bit because it's only six digits.

aussieguy1234 1 hour ago | parent

If it happened to me, my next move would be to steal it back

orbital-decay 57 minutes ago | parent

My UIN was merely 7-digit and when it got hacked the guy just logged in, chatted with my friends about random things, and left. I only found out because they were puzzled by "me" talking weird.

taspeotis 2 hours ago | parent

Rewrite it in Rust

Teknomadix 34 minutes ago | parent

Ask an agent to rewrite it in Rust. #ftfy

mannycalavera42 1 hour ago | parent

Tooooooooooooooooooooooooot! (startup jingle, good mems)

compass_copium 1 hour ago | parent

>When a password of 9 or more characters is sent, their buffer is over-run, and it allows you to log in.

Man, computers used to be fun

mingus88 1 hour ago | parent

It really was a fun time. I remember sitting in a coffee shop just sniffing WiFi traffic.

A friend was a reporter for the local paper and interviewed the mayor. I turned my laptop around and showed my friend the mayors imap password. Just right there floating through the air.

saadn92 1 hour ago | parent

Yep, now everything is done through agents unfortunately.

nubinetwork 1 hour ago | parent

Unix crypt only accepted 8 characters and ignored the rest. If your password was 123456789, it was considered the same as 12345678a.

a_bonobo 32 minutes ago | parent

For local LAN play, Half-Life checked the CD key only for length I believe? It would happily accept 1234-56789-0123

chuckhend 1 hour ago | parent

Uh oh!

tehlike 47 minutes ago | parent

Incoming file transfer

stavros 32 minutes ago | parent

Oh god this instantly took me back to my the way teenage years' room felt and smelled.

pavel_lishin 31 minutes ago | parent

There are some point of sales systems that use the same sound effect, and every time it's like I'm teleported back to the 90s, sitting in my room with a pepsi, browsing the web and chattin' with friends.

waltbosz 52 minutes ago | parent

AOL Instant Messenger had several remote code execution exploits. They worked just by sending an IM to someone. You could also crash their computer remotely, or maybe it would just create their client.

Also their stored password encryption algorithm was easily reversible.

camcil 41 minutes ago | parent

The AIM days are one for the books. What a time to be alive and interested in computerin'

jonhohle 34 minutes ago | parent

Wasn’t that how audio avatars worked (not by crashing, but ACr)? What a time to be alive.