Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Reminded me of coding a funny practical joke TSR program which after several days showed a message 'Press and hold left Ctrl + left Alt + W + Right Shift + P + M to see a surprise!'. After victim would press this combo, message changes: 'Now, when you release these keys I'll format a floppy inserted in your drive A:\' (that was the time not everyone had hdd on C:\ yet;). The picture of someone sitting with their hands stuck to the keyboard and shouting for help was just too funny.. however, testing the payload, time after time to ensure everything would be working as prescribed, the first victim was I myself, stupidly forgetting to remove diskette from the drive after another run. The sources were on A:\. Nobody home. Mother comes back from work in about 3 hours. Damn. I tried to open the hatch on the floppy drive door with my leg fingers to prevent diskette from being erased. Then quickly jumped to pull it out, though the drive has made a number of cycles before it was escaped.. and the source lost forever:) that was already enough fun not to bother about it again;)


Ha! Okay that is hilarious.

Both the idea ("hold these keys"), and how it ended up backfiring.

Though the program would have given just as funny results if you had not actually formatted the disk on key-release. After all, how is the user going to know whether the program speaks the truth?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: