Progz were sort of the gateway drug to real hacking of AOL. There was a headbanger dude named Beav who archived most progs for download on his Angelfire website LensHell. There's still an archive available (https://lenshellprogarchive.com)
Progz were mostly for annoyance and were either released as one purpose programs, such as a punter to boot people offline, or a fader to color text in chat when colors were introduced, or an OH Scroller that scrolled endless text to disrupt chat (you would run these on hacked overhead aka "OH" accounts used by staff that didn't get auto-booted for scrolling). Some progs were sort of All-In-One programs where they had maybe a punter feature, a fader feature, etc. These all in one progs usually had a bunch of useless stuff like an "echo bot" or "trivia bot" or whatever. Some had more nefarious purposes like termers which were used to get people's accounts terminated. Things like punters and termers were usually short-lived as AOL would catch on to whichever method they were using an patch it.
The article talks about the open-source sharing nature of progz, and maybe that was true for the folks who lived in the vb private chats or who released their BAS files (dos32.bas was my first ever intro to coding), but many in the hacker scene were typical teenage boys who would constantly try to one up each other and prove how leet or oldschool they were...and new methods weren't always widely shared. The biggest status symbols for AOL hackers were leet screen names, like "Boss" or "Hack". Even more leet were 3chars which were the smallest amount of characters in a screen name and thus hard to get. The leetest of all were restricted names that had banned words, like "FuckAOL" or were only 2chars like "DJ", or indents like " MrLeet" since they were seemingly impossible to make.
In order to get these screen names, hackers would find ways to steal account information to reset the passwords, or use tools like Sub7 to infect users and then steal their passwords. More technically savvy hackers would exploit holes in AOL's systems such as the "sign up" page which was the source of a really famous hack in 2000. Other hackers were adept at finding ways to convince AOL to terminate an account for supposed threats. Because of this, most AOL hackers had an extensive numbers of <>< or phished accounts to avoid a rival hacker from terming you "perm" account which was usually paid for by your parents. The term phish and its associated progz, phishers, phish tanks, etc., were actually coined on AOL.
Some guys from the scene are legendary. One guy who used AOL on a Mac would often find exploits only he could use, including one where he stole pretty much every 3char name available. Rumor has it he went on to create a very popular online game where users are slithering snakes. :-)
> the "sign up" page which was the source of a really famous hack in 2000
I'm not sure if this is the same exploit, but there was an exploit where you could steal usernames from people during signup. The victim's username had to be an AIM-only account (never linked to a paid AOL account). Then with some sorcery, you bypassed the "invalid name (already taken)" UI block and the backend would make an AOL account with the username.
I stole "christ" from someone this way. Sorry, Chris T. I was 16 years old. A friend stole it from me later, and then someone TOS'd it after that (banned it using a mod account).
Random people would message the account all the time, as if it were actually God, and ask for advice. 16 year old me did my best to give well-considered advice.
> including one where he stole pretty much every 3char name available
Interesting. I think people in my friend circle were in possession of two until AIM pretty much died ('zad' and 'baz'--only 75% sure I got the 2nd one right). Guess they got lucky!
I think it was the same exploit which used free.aol.com. They had a 3-step sign up process with the first step letting you choose a name. It would validate the name was >= 3 chars in length, started with a letter, and didn’t contain banned words. Once validated, the name was stored in a hidden input value in the source of the second page. Someone saved the webpage offline so you could replace the sn variable with any name not on use on AOL. Then open it locally and go right to step 3 where you enter credit details. This let you creat indents, 2chars, banned words, and steal AIMs.
Progz were mostly for annoyance and were either released as one purpose programs, such as a punter to boot people offline, or a fader to color text in chat when colors were introduced, or an OH Scroller that scrolled endless text to disrupt chat (you would run these on hacked overhead aka "OH" accounts used by staff that didn't get auto-booted for scrolling). Some progs were sort of All-In-One programs where they had maybe a punter feature, a fader feature, etc. These all in one progs usually had a bunch of useless stuff like an "echo bot" or "trivia bot" or whatever. Some had more nefarious purposes like termers which were used to get people's accounts terminated. Things like punters and termers were usually short-lived as AOL would catch on to whichever method they were using an patch it.
The article talks about the open-source sharing nature of progz, and maybe that was true for the folks who lived in the vb private chats or who released their BAS files (dos32.bas was my first ever intro to coding), but many in the hacker scene were typical teenage boys who would constantly try to one up each other and prove how leet or oldschool they were...and new methods weren't always widely shared. The biggest status symbols for AOL hackers were leet screen names, like "Boss" or "Hack". Even more leet were 3chars which were the smallest amount of characters in a screen name and thus hard to get. The leetest of all were restricted names that had banned words, like "FuckAOL" or were only 2chars like "DJ", or indents like " MrLeet" since they were seemingly impossible to make.
In order to get these screen names, hackers would find ways to steal account information to reset the passwords, or use tools like Sub7 to infect users and then steal their passwords. More technically savvy hackers would exploit holes in AOL's systems such as the "sign up" page which was the source of a really famous hack in 2000. Other hackers were adept at finding ways to convince AOL to terminate an account for supposed threats. Because of this, most AOL hackers had an extensive numbers of <>< or phished accounts to avoid a rival hacker from terming you "perm" account which was usually paid for by your parents. The term phish and its associated progz, phishers, phish tanks, etc., were actually coined on AOL.
Some guys from the scene are legendary. One guy who used AOL on a Mac would often find exploits only he could use, including one where he stole pretty much every 3char name available. Rumor has it he went on to create a very popular online game where users are slithering snakes. :-)