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Comment by aesegiopiuaer | Hacker News Reader

I remember when CdC released Back Orifice to remote control Windows machines, like ejecting CDROM and such [1]. We really did come a long way, where 0-days go for 20 million dollars. [2].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Orifice

2: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/russian-zero-day-seller-of...

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I was managing a few labs full of machines used for training on NT4 which meant I was frequently re-imaging and could use effective remote control capability. Back Orifice was, at the time, the absolute best remote admin solution available for free. I could deploy it in the image and then use it to kick off reimage process, reboot, log out a student, or monitor their screen from the teacher's desk to share on the attached TV. It really was a handy tool for remote admin tasks.

Could also disable certain keys on victims keyboard. Did that in the office a bunch was hilarious watching co workers who had no idea what was going on. Perfect for a Monday morning.

I may or may not have known someone who wrote a shell script with the linux BO client to reset Windows machines' home pages to a porn site that paid a dollar for every unique clickthrough in IP ranges that were in specific foreign countries.

This person might have earned several hundred dollars each month for several months afterward. But opening their cdrom tray could have been fun too. He probably wishes he had thought of that.

I actually bought and wore the back orifice t-shirt from the CdC website in high school. Did any machines have that software installed? Maybe.

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