QOTD: Have You Ever Hacked Anything?

I'm a hardware hacker. I rewire toys and instruments to make them sound more "8-bit".

I also hack (in the fixing sense) old educational programs to get them to work on newer OSs than they were written for.

Using a hex edit program to change a saved game was often more fun that playing the game. This was before the internet so you had to work it all out.

My last bit of fun was getting a PC in a high street book shop to go onto the net, when only their own network and website could be seen. Didn't take much.

savegames, wifis, old dos programs, circumventing time-limitations, few email accounts, one or two servers, login passwords, bios passwords... Nothing really serious and none of that I would call "hacking". A bit of googling, social engineering, time and perhaps a need to do something. Hacking does not mean what it used to back in the day, so I have "hacked" some stuff nowadays but I've never hacked anything "properly".

MSDOS command.com using hexedit.

wasn't that how microsoft started?

I've dabbled, nothing malicious though, I prefer securing systems than breaking into them. Though, if we use the "hacking to improve" meaning, then yes, I do.

Hacked an awful lot of WEP-protected wireless networks.

i hacked in to the computer network at school and was able to view any other students private folders. i told my mates, somehow the word spread of how to do it. someone in my class handed in an assignment that someone else had done and saved in their private folder. they just renamed the work as thier own. both handed in the same work jsut different names and both got F's. I thought i wouldn't want my work jeopardized like that so i told the administrators that theres a hole in thier software and showed them the hack... The hack was fixed the next time i tried a week later...

I've hacked my brother's calculator when I was a kid, actually i've made my first steps programming that calculator - Casio 80P or 90P... just don't remember anymore. I've made a program in it to dump it's memory (even the protected places by deceiving it's systems by changing segments) Just like like people did some decades before when hacking 80286. I've got access to all the code in the built in programes and used that knowledge to make games in it .
hacked some games too a decade ago too, like scarab that I didn't have release version, so to play all missions, I only had to use hex-editor, that time "hackman" and changed the current mission. The only protection was on the menu (silly).
hacked winzip that time too using debuggers like softice and vc++ together just to know I could but bought it after (I mean, someone bought it for me - now we don't need it anyway).

I hack games to pump up my stats. But only on games that are overly hard.

Its really enjoyable creating trainers for your games, I once made a money trainer for theme hospital with trainer maker kit and soft ice i think it was called, not done that for a long while though.

I dont think you will get hackers admitting to what they have hacked on a public site though, I suppose you could use the rule from fight club when it comes to hacking.

My hacking exploits are detailed at - http://jamesplee.com/archtech.htm

teach me your ways.