Re: "Popular WWW browser" hacks UPDATE

Article: 8828 of alt.hackers
From: Brad Nelson <bsnelson@spd.dsccc.com>
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: "Popular WWW browser" hacks UPDATE
Date: 10 Oct 1995 21:56:06 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corporation, Plano, Texas USA
Lines: 53
Sender: I
Approved: Frustrated, Inc.
Message-ID: 45eq5m$bhe@tpd.dsccc.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: onramp.dsccc.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.2N (Windows; I; 16bit)
Status: RO

For those who haven't read my predecessor post, this won't make much
since until you do.

<pause>

Ok, now that you have read it, as I mentioned, the hack for posting here
"worked", however, did I ever get into a world of trouble when I
tried to
post to a moderated group with a REAL moderator (namely,
rec.audio.high-end). I assumed (incorrectly, it turns out) that the
A______ header line on a group with a moderator would be checked to see
if it was from the real moderator. Not so. I got a VERY nasty letter back
from the moderators, which I thought was a bit harsh, considering that my
post was legit and wasn't "test post", "$$$ Make Money Fast
$$$" or
anything like that.

Oh well, this problem led to my:

ObFixTheOtherHackCorrectlyHack:

I started thinking that the ideal situation would be to trick, uh, my
"popular WWW browser" into giving me a complete line in the message
header, into which I could put whatever I liked. This way, I could say
"Organization: <whatever>" when I wanted to post normally,
then change it
to "A_______: <whoever>" when I did the alt.hackers thing.

But, it turns out that (a) my browser is somewhat sensitive to what you
change the "Organization:" field to (e.g., can't change it to just
a null
character, and can't do a <return> followed by a null), and (b) NNTP
servers are VERY picky about whitespace in header lines (e.g., you can't
put spaces before the keywords, nor TABs, nor BS, nor DEL, etc.). I tried
everything: Putting spaces in the field, doing 7 spaces and 7 DELs, 7
spaces and 7 BSs, 7 pairs of <space> and DEL, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Then, I got an idea to try to identify another useless header keyword
(e.g. "Sender:"; seems to get ignored as long as a "From:"
is present.) I
then hacked the "Organization:     " field to say "Sender:
I<cr><lf>   ",
which makes him spit out the bogus "Sender: I" line, followed
by whatever
I have set in the User_Organization field in my .INI. Put "Organization:
<whatever>" in the field, and post away normally. Put "A______:
<whatever>" in the field, and alt.hackers, here we come.

Whew. The only depressing part of this is how long it took to figure out
a way around the limitations. Oh well, this is what hackers do, eh?


--
 Bradley Nelson 214 519-6796     | bsnelson@spd.dsccc.com
            fax 214 519-4026     | This message is not representative
                                 | of DSC Communications Corporation
"I didn't buy this team to make money.." - Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry
Jones

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