

Ask YC: Prank Hacking - kyro

This doesn't really pertain to startups, so forgive me.<p>So I've sort of found myself amidst a pranking war, and it's getting pretty serious, ie. finding chopped up fish and roosters at my place, etc. Revenge is the only way to go, obviously, but I'm unsure as to what should be done.<p>I thought that maybe this community's members might have some really clever pranks/tricks up their sleeves. I know there are many of you out there that are pretty troublesome fellows. Help out a fellow yc'er in dire need of advice. Prank hack away.
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michael_dorfman
I once made the mistake of making a (true but) snarky comment to a co-worker,
whose boyfriend happened to be a hobby taxidermist. They decided to get me
back by filling the glovebox of my car with dead squirrels (which they
conveniently had in their freezer, waiting to be stuffed).

They then arranged for a local cop to pull me over, and ask for my license and
registration. I opened the glovebox to dig out the registration, and a
seemingly endless cascade of dead squirrels began, while I started mumbling
frantically....

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pierrefar
My favorite low-cost easy-peasy make-'em-feel-stupid prank: take a screen
capture of their desktop (without any windows open) and set the screen cap as
the desktop background. Next, delete/hide (depending how nasty you want to go)
all their desktop icons. If the taskbar is always visible, hide it too, or
even better, resize it to zero pixels.

Step away from computer and find a nice vantage point to watch them click and
scream at their non-responding computer.

Works a treat.

~~~
almost
A friend of mine used to have a screenshot of winamp as his desktop. No matter
how many times I used that computer to play music I'd always start by clicking
on the fake winamp :p

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walesmd
Air Conditioning ducts, particularly of those with Central Air.

Get some catfish bait, a few pounds of shrimp, fart bombs, or even a few dead
squirrels - all of these worked well for me in High School.

Squirrels are probably by far the best and I recommend combining them with
another form of attack. Place a few pounds of shrimp in one location and throw
some frozen squirrels elsewhere.

About the time the shrimp smell really gets bad (about 2 days) the squirrels
will be thawed and start to rot themselves. You'll get a nice delayed attack
about a week after they find the shrimp.

~~~
ra
yuck!

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tgdavies
One of my colleagues was recently welcomed back fromholiday with this addition
to his cron file:

0,20,40 * * * * /usr/bin/killall -9 java

Or is that going too far?

~~~
pim
You automatically get rid of their memory leaks every 20 minutes. That's a
service, not a prank.

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imp
If they use a Windows computer, type the command Ctrl+Alt+DownArrow. It turns
their screen upside-down. The other arrows work as well to turn the screen
sideways. Not sure how familiar most people are with this though. I've always
wanted to try it on someone and see how they reacted.

~~~
andrewbadera
ahhh ... no it doesn't. perhaps with a third party monitor utility ...

~~~
imp
It might be a Dell thing. I've only tried it on Dells and I've seen it work on
a couple laptops and an older desktop. Haven't really tested this extensively
though. YMMV.

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thaumaturgy
A fellow sysadmin that I used to work with did a brilliant job of pranking me
by quietly changing my ksh ENV variable to another file, and then aliasing a
handful of commands (like su) to some brilliant ascii art taunts. As an added
bonus, if I didn't clean the mess up in a specific order, then it attempted to
repair any missing bits of itself.

I didn't know about the ENV variable at the time, so it took me a few minutes
to puzzle out. I cheated with a carefully crafted find command.

We used Mac workstations in that office. The Mac OS has a sort-of
vulnerability where, if you can get admin access to it, you can create an
invisible administrator account on the machine with ssh privileges. I always
wanted to do that, and then modify the su command on our server to watch for
his username, ssh back to his machine, and play the "Oh my god, they gave you
ROOT?!" clip from Jeffrey Hitchins' "Tech Support".

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steveplace
Back in my frat-boy college days, the best prank ever happened to me.

We were having a serious prank war. Then we had a dance marathon, which
effectively left my room unguarded for 24 hours.

So the prankster removed all of my furniture, removed my carpet, and put my
furniture back _exactly_ where it was.

<http://i28.tinypic.com/2ec17w1.jpg>

So me and my friend come back, exhausted, and walk in to no carpet. We were
too tired to be pissed.

He's now working for State Farm. Soon I will save up some money to rent a
billboard in Tallahassee to make fun of him.

Soon, the day will be mine.

~~~
xirium
There's a variation of this prank which requires the victim to be drunk - and
a fortuitous arrangement of rooms.

A student returned to his fourth storey room in a very drunk state and fell
into a comatose sleep. While he was asleep, his friends swapped the contents
of his room with an identical room on the ground floor. In the morning, four
people with balaclavas burst into "his" room and threw him out of the window.
Of course, he thought that he was on the fourth storey and that he was going
to be thrown from a great height.

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donal
My buddy switched someone's explorer.exe with a Mac OS 7 emulator.

It was hilarious.

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frederiksen
I heard of a guy who modified his friend's .bashrc to contain a sleep command
with a variable time limit. Every time the .bashrc got run, the sleep command
would run for a second longer. The first couple of times it was unnoticeable
and after a few weeks he would log in, then go grab a sandwich before he could
do anything. Subversive!

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eru
I once read a children's book about a company - actually a startup - that was
in the service business of pranks and revenges.

You can find it on Amazon ([http://www.amazon.de/Die-B%C3%A4rendienst-GmbH-
Martin-Karau/...](http://www.amazon.de/Die-B%C3%A4rendienst-GmbH-Martin-
Karau/dp/3357004062)) - but it is in German.

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wafflesrevenge
Pranks are always tough, these aren't getting vindictive are they? If they are
out to have fun, try photoshopping him into riske photos, tape/superglue his
cubicle/something down, prank call him (impersonate some offical)...do
something that gets his blood running that isn't permanent.

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xenoterracide
change their keyboard setting to dvorak. make sure they don't have to type a
passwd. it's more funny to watch them type gibberish and know it.

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dmose
route their favorite webmail client to a gay porn site (or straight, if they
are gay..) through their hosts file

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kajecounterhack
Write a script to send him email...that looks like it came from himself. Make
it say "Your security has been compromised."

Fairly simple with php or something lol

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TeHCrAzY
Icing sugar / flour, pour into the air intake ducts of their car. (Pro Tip:
They are generally at the front, just underneath the windscreen.

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swombat
It's easy... you break into the victim's flat, and wait just behind the door
with a machete.

When the victim comes into their flat, slash violently at their neck area,
several times if necessary. Make sure you're wearing cheap clothes that you're
willing to burn, and have a change in a plastic bag in the bushes nearby, as
well as a number of towels.

In my experience, this always stops prank wars quickly, effectively, and at a
relatively low cost.

~~~
swombat
What!? Honestly, it's worked every time for me!

~~~
tom_rath
Your mistake was not including the fashion tip "Wear a Guy Fawkes mask".

