Grumpy Fuzzball Hacking.

Publicated on : 1210149150






Every now and then, the discussion on what hacking means flares up. Which is good in a way because it is important to know what hacking means. The best way to understand it is to go way back. Well, actually you don't have to go very far to see the true meaning of hacking.



One of the best -personal- examples was the grumpy fuzzball hack. That prank was launched in 1989 by MIT students. When MIT students log onto an Athena workstation, they are normally greeted by the Athena Owl. At the end of the 1989 Fall Term, on the Monday of the last week of classes, they were met by a rather different character, the grumpy fuzzball. Many students commented the fuzzball resembled a burned-out owl and thought it was a fitting revision for the final week of classes.



The Athena workstations 'spontaneously' changed over to the fuzzball login banner around 8am Monday morning. For a few hectic hours on Monday morning, Athena staff examined the code responsible for the hack. They determined that the perpetrators had hacked well over 200 public workstations by hand, and that the hack was harmless. Indeed, at 4am Tuesday morning, the workstations reverted in an equally spontaneous manner.



Now that is fun, and just cool and in a sense old school Rick Rollin. If you want to read more on the history of hacking, I would suggest to read this page for more information:



http://hacks.mit.edu/by_year/