i've said it before and i'll say it
again i love
computers i'm a little nerd boy and i've
always been fascinated by the idea of
hacking even before i really knew what
that was it just seemed cool it was a
mysterious world that only a select few
understood but it doesn't need to be
mysterious it's actually a pretty chill
place and i'd like to show you around
but first a word from our sponsor
alright so there's this brand called
mischief and every two weeks they do a
drop what's a drop i hear you ask
good question see this it could be
anything sometimes it's a physical thing
you can buy like a dog collar that
curses whenever your dog barks here's
the thing though that one sold out in
seconds and got on national news shows
so you've probably seen their drops and
didn't even know it was them
sometimes the drops are digital like the
time they made a font exactly like times
new roman but wider so you can cheat on
your next english paper
you're welcome anyway they just released
an app so you can be the first to find
out what the next drop is no two drops
are the same and some of them are
secrets only available in the app see
where i'm going with this
no because i haven't said it yet the app
has a messaging feature and i'm not sure
who the messages get sent to but
somebody at mischief has to read them
right so i thought it would be funny if
all 1.5 million of you downloaded the
app and spammed them with
i don't know that part's up to you poop
emojis shakespearean poetry the entire
b-movie script mischief specifically
told me not to say anything about
spamming the messenger because it'll
bring down their servers or something
but i'm gonna go ahead and file that
under good problems to have
so i may never get another sponsor but
if we can take down some servers with
poop emojis well i think that'd be
pretty funny
please go to mschf.com and troll my
sponsors
i heard they like mischief
what is hacking most people probably
think it's illegal and to be fair
sometimes it is but the definition that
i like
is getting technology to do something
that it wasn't
originally supposed to do sure that
could be something like hacking a bank's
computer to give you a million dollars
it certainly wasn't supposed to do that
but it could also be jailbreaking your
phone and there's nothing illegal about
that no matter what apple wants you to
believe
so when i was young and fascinated by
the idea of computer hacking i would
search the internet for how to hack and
read tons of articles and blog posts
about how computer systems work and how
to break into them but one time i made
the mistake of trying to share that
passion with my sister
all she saw was a big old juicy
opportunity to get me in trouble she was
like
mom tim tom's hacking into the
government he's gonna go to prison
and i was like no uh hacking isn't
necessarily illegal it's just about
getting computers to do stuff that the
original designers
never intended and mom tom was like
i'm not doing this right now despite my
sister's best efforts i learned
so many cool hacking tricks that i was
basically keanu reeves the only problem
was a ton of the information i found
was outdated and super worthless for
example back in the 90s when you put a
quarter into a pay phone it would place
certain tones down the line to tell the
phone system that you paid but if you
recorded those tones on something like a
tape recorder and played them into the
handset the phone system would think
that you paid and let you make calls for
free
neat but back when i tried it payphones
had switched to digital systems that
weren't vulnerable to that hack and
modern pay phones
don't exist thinking back on it a lot of
the information i found was about how
the phone system works or used to work
which kind of makes sense phones were
the network that connected everybody's
homes and businesses before the internet
was a thing and phone hacking or
freaking as the cool kids called it used
to be a big part of being a hacker
my favorite thing that i learned from my
freaking days almost did get me in
trouble with the police
basically i learned how those old rotary
phones worked and i figured out that i
could dial a phone number by just taking
the phone off the hook a bunch of times
in the right pattern kinda like morse
code i thought the idea of dialing a
phone number without pressing any
buttons was neat but i also didn't
expect it to work
so i used that trick to dial the first
phone number i could think of
9-1-1 once the phone started ringing my
heart sank and i hung up but it was too
late the police had already traced the
call the cops showed up to my house like
30 minutes later and i was just like
whoa g willikers well
i sure didn't dial 9-1-1 yup i didn't
press any buttons at all
and i got away with it like a totally
elite hacker
now i don't think movies are responsible
for my fascination with computers or
hacking but they definitely fueled that
flame my favorite movie of all time is
hackers a movie that came out when i was
a baby there's a scene in the movie
where one of the characters uses that
phone hook trick to call someone and a
different scene where he uses the tape
recorder trick to use a pay phone for
free most of the
hacking in the movie is unrealistic and
just looks cool but there's tons of
parts where the characters use
actual hacks and the movie doesn't call
attention to it they just do it like
it's no big deal when i first saw that i
was ecstatic like
that would actually work or at least it
would have back in the day
nowadays hacking doesn't revolve around
the phone system nearly as much
and as i've gotten older i'm usually
less interested in breaking stuff
but i still think that mentality is a
great way to look at the world instead
of accepting things as they are or as
they were intended to be
approaching everything with a little bit
of mischief just makes life more
interesting
you