I’m getting ready to upgrade my computer, and while going through some old files I stumbled across Fate Zero, the last version released of infamous Fate-X application. The tool was popular way back in the late 90’s since it added a lot extra functionality to AOL – some of which AOL was ok with, and some of which it wasn’t very fond of. It was created by two mysterious individuals known as MaGuS and FunGii. After Da Chronic (known for AOHell), MaGuS was probably the most widely known AOL hacker. Even though Fate-X 2.5 and 3.0 had a much bigger impact, Fate Zero was the most extensive in regards to features.
To maintain its status at the top of the heap, Fate Zero had to protect its external data, and this meant encrypting it so that other developers couldn’t snatch it up for their own progs. The prog scene of that time, however, is now long dead. Seeing these files today, I got curious. MaGuS was only 16 when he wrote Fate Zero. When I was 16, I knew almost nothing about encryption. It wasn’t until I was in college that I got a good exposure to the field of cryptography. Even though MaGuS seemed like a pretty smart guy, at that point in time he probably also didn’t know much about encryption. This made me think that the files might be easy to crack. It seemed like a fun way to spend a few hours, so I decided to see if I could decode them.
Interestingly (or not interestingly, depending on how you feel about it), the biggest source of external data for Fate Zero was AOL ASCII Art (ASCII Art done in 10pt Arial). This was typically used for scrolling into chat rooms. Fate Zero had over 500 files dedicated to this. You can see an example piece of art and its corresponding file encoding, below.
.--··´¯¯¯¨˜`·-., .---··· ´¨¨¨ `·. .·´ ', ,' ', ¦ /| | / | ', ( \\:\ | /| /''\ .| | '·. \|\ \.,'.|::\|\/ |¸,.-·´¨¨`·/.·´ | | ` ·-\\|'/|¨`, `|˜¨|¨˜`·„¸ | |´¯`, | ,'/||', \:'| , |_\::':/ | |, ,' | ,'//| ',¯¯·', | | ¯ | ,'/ | | ` ·. --·´ | | | |´ | | _ ` ·.__ .·´ | |/_ | | | |¨¯ ¯¯///,··\ ,.--·| | ',¯¨¨˜˜``' |.·´| |--,··´¯//\ \ \ // Aeka _¸'·-By KioNe
File data for the above picture:
MDRæ”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f¡’ý)õ ý¦¡“rn~f”…f”…f”“sŽ¡ ý”î …f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…fÁ,“Sk…f”…f,f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…moæ”…rˆ”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…fˆ rP”…ì”…f”…f”…f£áf”…f”…”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…Ân~f”Œr”…fœ…f”…¢½®Áfð…f£áf”…f£Œm½”…f”“”…f”…f”áSk…f”…m¢…f½ðÁf½¢‘m🀽ðÁuð r¡ ú Åý¢ ú”áf”…f”…f”áSk…f”…f”Åf¡Á¢Ý›” ԑf”…fÁðýîÝ ý¦ø f”…fð…fðõÁ …f”áSk…f”…f”…f›”ÂÝ›‘f½®ŒÂ …f”…ÂÀП€ˆ®”f”…fð…f”ár”‘m”…fðrP”…f”…f Œuð…fˆ õ›‘f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…”…fÝ”f”…f”…Ân~f”…f”‘m”…”áfÁ” t”’s)…f”…f”…f”…fð…f”…”…f”…f”…Ân~f”…f”áú”áf”áf”ÄfÁ” tÀÓ…t)…f”…f”áf”…f𔥔…f”…fÝoæ”…f”…”…”… $…f$”u ý½”…f”‘tŽ¡ ”…f”áf›‘õ ýÞÁÔŒSk…f”…fð“ýð…fð’s, ú£”¢Ð…¢”…f£…fµÊ±Â”…¥› s£í…‘Ê㳫n~
So right away it’s clear he’s not using a simple substitution cipher, yet due to the repeated use of white space in the source data, a pattern does seem to emerge in the encoded data. I compared the file sizes and found MaGuS’ encoded *.mdr files to be 5 bytes larger than their decoded counter parts. I chalked this up to the “MDR” that prefixed all the files, and the ending carriage return and line feed that seemed to end all of the files.
That meant there was probably one-for-one character encoding going on. After trying a few things out, I realized every 4th character seemed to use the same encoding. My guess was that he was combining 4 simple substitution ciphers, and using a different cipher depending on the index of the character. I created a quick script that read in an input/output combination and then tried to use that information to decode an encrypted file. To my delight, the script (mostly) worked! This was great, however, without knowing the full map of each cipher, I would only be able to get partial results.
I looked further and found each cipher was simply doing a character offset, meaning each cipher was a Caesar Cipher. The offsets were 70, 97, 116 and 101, respectively. If you look up the corresponding ASCII code for those numbers, you get the word “Fate”. I tried out this new decoding strategy and was able to successfully decode a directory of MaGuS’ files. I had broken the code! MaGuS was using what is known as the Vigenere Cipher, and for that particular directory, “Fate” was the pass-phrase.
In another interesting twist, I noticed certain types of files used different Vigenere keywords. For his *.mdf data files, the keyword “12151981” was used. My guess was that this was his birthday, since this date would have made him 16 when the prog was released and he mentions that he was 16 in the app’s about section. In this same about section he also mentions that he’s Asian and what high school he went to. This narrows down who he is to almost a T.
This got me thinking: “I wonder if I can track down who MaGuS was?” With the aid of some crafty googling, email addresses taken from webpages mentioned inside of Fate (if you dig through the machine code, you’ll find a dozen or so URLs), Rapportive (which can be used to look up social profiles based on email addresses), the internet archive, and leads taken from Fate Zero itself, I was able to pin point an individual who fit all of the criteria and was friends with people who got shout outs in Fate. I plugged their name and the “12-15-1981” birthday into dobsearch.com, and only one result came back, and it was from the state and city MaGuS said he lived in. I was stunned, I had found MaGuS.
I feel like it’d be wrong to out him, but at the same time I know it’d be a cop-out to not say anything. So I’ll just say that according to his LinkedIn and Facebook, he works for a consulting firm in the Washington DC area and is specializing in web related work. The rumors of him working for a security firm or of being this guy are false. He also seems to be somewhat of world traveler, and has a side hobby of being a photographer.
Part of me wondered for a second if I should contact him. He was a big inspiration to me back in the day, and Fate-X and its ilk are what led me to learn how to program. However, after talking with my wife, we thought that’d be too creepy. He made some cool progs a long, long time ago, no need to freak him out with some elaborate story that involves breaking some encryption he wrote over a decade ago.
Anyway, after I’d finished my little side quest, and I realized I still had 500+ decrypted AOL ASCII Art files, many of which haven’t seen the light of day in over a decade. Since some of that stuff is kind of cool, I decided to create a gallery for it. If you have a few moments check it out. Also, feel feel to grab and host any art there that you like, just be sure to leave in any artist signatures. It’s kind of strange to think that era is so far away, but also kind of neat to find remnants of it every so often.
2013.04.28 Update: A bit more has happened since I made the original post. MaGuS actually emailed me to congratulate me on the finding and to confirm his identity (though I’ll continue to respect his anonymity). He also mentioned that at the time he wrote Fate he had no training or knowledge of programming, and that he came up with his own encryption method as he went along. I don’t fault him for this, as Fate is still really impressive and I think most of us were in the same boat back then. He seems like a pretty cool guy, and I was glad to hear he enjoyed the post.
2016.03.10 Update: To reconnect with fellow former AOL developers:
I was around then also. I had a few names, xbhobx, went by CrypT KeepER also, among other things. Spent a lot of time distributing stuff in my warez group Anarchy Online haha.
I had all these programs and wrote some myself in VB, taking decompilers to figure out the insides of stuff I made a random version of aohell also that I put out, among other random things. I remember making MACROS too, I loved scrolling my custom stuff in the rooms and contributed to MANY other programs that I can even remember. So funny looking back on it now (but I am grown up and a web developer, so something stuck with me!) If anyone has the programs hit me up I would love to get them all and keep the shit avail/alive.
OTHER RANDOM TIDBIT: One of the contributors to FATE was in my high school (in Connecticut), an artist who is in the scrolling credits. Was friends with his brother at the time (middle school).
CRYPT KEEPER! This is Sephl0! Remember me? I work for the feds now! Crazy right?
Federal Janitor? 😛
Hey brotha, add me to twitter and message me, @rej_ex
By any chance would anyone still happen to have reset by skribe or. 1-888’d by skribe (shit been a while think those were the names of the progs I made…
Theweedmang@aim.com
I remember you dude!
moha@mohmal.com
This sure brings back memories. I wish I had my old Windows 95 machine. I left so many unfinished (and finished) projects on it. I wouldn’t be where I was today in my career without all those years screwing around on aol2.5/3.0/4.0.
I sure miss those days.
hiwind.bas
hiwind.bas was mostly all i used =D
he’s how I learned how to program. winsock pw crackers and network punters.
same here bro.. those were the days lol!!!
Someone created a irc channel web-based irc.rizon.net #island55 or visit http://rof1.net
I went by Spoon and Moo. Anyone remember hanging out in The Island, private chat? Favorite place for the “AoHackers” to hang out in..
Fate X was cool. But I was a fan of Pond Scum, and Ski’s amazingly fast scrollers.
Aw, the good ole days of sending PW stealers to OH accounts and freezing up entire chatrooms, just because.
Deadend, island55, vb, warez, was my hangout and KChat. Started back on 2.5 before the color im bombers existed and where the 2 im punt worked. < ing and TCP/Ip cracking ohs, internals and guides before the winsock came about. Collecting screen names from public rooms and using pizza spam. Hiding del trees and pws inside .docs with hidden .exe's,punters and scrollers directed to hotmails and yahoos full of <'s programming on vb, scrolling and having tos wars with and lagging the rooms. Group Killas
I remember GK used to run shit in the chat rooms, LOL. Didn’t you guys have your own TOS’r program that your whole squad used? The 2.5 and 3.0 days of AOL were the best.
Whoa can’t believe I came across this, shoutout GK. I ended up meeting magus and rj2 later in life and lith still hits me up every few years. AOL 2.5 was the best of times.
The discussion has moved to the Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/297526060414740/
This is mad old school, I remember everyone thinks that they’re l337, do they still use this word? I went by PoRnOGuY and had fun messing around. I remembered creating fake accounts using that magic Bank of America 4019 prefix, visiting freewarez / warez / newsgroups, phishing, TOSing and punting people. Great times.
Ohhh those were the good old days of having fun online without the authorities spying on everything. Still miss punting people, used to be fun until they started having those CAT bots. Huge Thank You to MaGuS & FuNGii for their work, I’m sure I was the only one inspired by their Fate X proggies to eventually start a career in IT. And for those that used the faithful Fate X releases, I think you’ll appreciate listening to this song, just fast forward to 0:27 for the memorable part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYBIRHi5-o8
I, too, remember being all over AOL in the 90’s and it is the very reason I am a software developer to this day. AOL Proggies Forever!
We should create an emulated AOL environment somehow and bring progz back. What do you guys think?
Get me a machine with Windows 95 & a copy of Visual Basic 5 or 6, and I’m there 🙂 Maybe I’ll finally finish what was supposed to be my last proggie. It was really sick and had a 3d interface and custom animated / CGI intro. It was far too much work though, and new versions of AOL were coming out too often to keep up with, so I ditched it and decided to just do artwork for other proggies like Fate 🙂
Good idea. Perhaps ME (size), and my boy (narc) could collab and figure something out to PHP BOOT people thru msgs lol
Holy cow… I was just reminiscing today and I thought about the “AOL Progie” days, and remembered that I was a huge, huge part of it back then.
In fact, and I’ve never revealed this publicly before now, but I am the one who did the artwork for the “Fate” programs back then along with FuNGii 🙂 I actually did ALL the artwork for Fate Zero; I am aero1 🙂 My name is Brendan Davis, and I worked with MaGuS on Fate Zero the entire way through.
Thank you for keeping this era alive with posts like this! It brings back fond memories of my childhood years (I was only about 13 or 14 when I worked with MaGuS on those). I am actually very ashamed of the intro I made for Fate Zero as well; way too filter-y, way too busy. But I was young, there were no Photoshop tutorials online for anything… hell, there wasn’t even a YouTube back then. Programs like Fate Zero, Materia (one of mine), Firetoolz (which I also worked on), etc. were the REAL beginning of file sharing (vis a vis “servers” and “mass mailers”) and not Napster 😉
I didn’t read the whole article, so you ought to modify my comment to censor his name / protect his identity.
I, on the other hand, do not care about my identity being revealed 😉
I have, however, lost touch with him in recent years. If you have his email address, I would love to get in touch with him. In fact, he and I didn’t really talk much after Fate Zero; he was really burned out on “Fate” by then, and he got a lot of flack for it after the release as well, mostly by people saying Fate X 4.0 was better, and that 3.0 was his “Pieta”, in a sense. I think FuNGii leaving also had a lot to do with it.
In any case, it’d be cool to get in touch with him and catch up. It’s been a really, really long time and I can only imagine what he’s up to these days. He was (and very likely still is) an absolute genius and was way ahead of his time!
wow! I remember Fire Toolz! those were the best days of the internet for me. Been on the internet since 95, and being in AOL chats using punters to wreck shit up was the best
does anyone remember a punter that was maybe called “Fourth of July” or something and it played the Tupac song Me against the World when it first opened?
Yep, I remember that one. Didn’t use it much, but I downloaded a lot of them just to research & get ideas for my own projects / anything I was working on at the time.
No way! Fire Toolz was the best back in the day. So many awesome memories. Didn’t the intro to one of the versions have a song from Prodigy in it?
That was made by RJ2 right? I remember chatting with him back in the day and, I think, helping him out a little bit when he was learning in the beginning.
Yep. RIP RJ2.
Yes, 3.0 I believe. Rj2 was a massive fan.
That brings back a lot of memories. The good old days of the AOL scene and progs etc and not a responsibility in the world. Good to see your site is still up and running PatorJK, I used to stop by here regularly to look at your VB stuff. I think you had my VB3 or VB5/6 BAS file posted in your VB section (Layzie32.bas). Cheers
layzie32.bas
holy fuck.
<—-OH Account
<—OH Account
<–OH Account
<-OH Account
<–OH Account
<—OH Account
<—-OH Account
<—OH Account
<–OH Account
<-OH Account
<OH Account
OH Account
H Account
Account
Account
ccount
count
ount
unt
nt
t
nt
unt
ount
count
count
Account
Account
H Account
OH Account
<OH Account
<-OH Account
<–OH Account
<—OH Account
<—-OH Account
<—-OH Account
<—-OH Account
<—-OH Account
pwned. (^)O_o(^)
lol.
promptly followed up by =qpermagag, or a clever letter to grandpasz9, or maybe lotsen (the german variant – they seemed to be gung ho on pulling the trigger quicker for my OSW emails.
<>
<>
– –+–+ CHoCoLaTe PuNTeR +–+– –
– –+–+ LOADED +–+– –
Really miss the scene. MaGuS was a huge inspiration to me in programming. Same for Pat, dos, and Monk-e-God. Syber too. He was developing full featured MP3 players while the rest of us were still writing ccoms in AOL chatrooms. Syber was actually the one that made me realize I could take this from a hobby to a career. Never spent a day in school learning the program, and still to this day I use the self-taught knowledge from my time in this scene specifically on a daily basis.
Anyone remember what this did pre-AOL4.0?
So much fun! I would give up anything to still have some of the projects I started way back then.
It cut out my code:
WordPress does some fancy parsing to remove text it thinks might be malicious. Just replace <>‘s with []’s and you should be good.
Hey patorjk
You should create a slack channel for all of us to join when we, one by one, all come across this post via Google and want to reconnect. It’ll be way easier and make more sense to shoot the breeze there rather than replying to this thread periodically. Plus, a lot of us are software developers in our thirties now and we got started writing code back in these little hacker wanna be days of AOL. So we’d all have a lot in common and it’d be fun to slack with fellow old school programmers.
Facebook – aol proggies
Not a bad idea, lots of people seem to have found this and want to reconnect, but the discussion is spread out over the course of several years. I wouldn’t be the best host/admin though. I have no time these days. I think the best avenue at this point is this Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/297526060414740/
It’s reasonably active and has almost 200 members. I might even edit the main post to mention it.
I went ahead and created a slack channel.
(URL removed)
If anyone sends me an email to (email removed) then I will add them to the channel. If you’re not familiar with Slack, it requires you to send out invites to people rather than them just signing up and logging in. But, the good news is that they don’t spam or anything. So feel free to send me an email stating you want to join our slack channel and I will add ya in there immediately!
Also, patorjk, please email me and I will made sure to make you an Admin as well.
Thanks!
Josh (aka PaL back on AOL in the damn 1990’s lol)
I found this by way of google imaging Fate x 3.0. I’ve spent the past half hour in a dazed out memory wormhole. A few memorable handles from the early days that I’d love to know what happened to:
pizza – The rumor at the time was that he was arrested for fraud, true/false?
face – back when having l33t sn’s was the jam, this dude had them all…
hiwind – amazing programmer
Big Pizza X wasn’t arrested for fraud. I last connected with him about 8 years ago or so. He’s doing well for himself. He was a smart kid.
Are you WiLD?
I am a cop now, I give it all up to have the internet go back to how it was in 1995. Remember, using computer back then was for losers. Look how times have changed now lol everyone can’t live without it!
Ps: master congratulations on your work on planetsourcecode.com
-511
Mario – is that you? If so, congrats on becoming a police officer bro.
-MaRz
I was Merlin of the legendary “merlin tools” (pretty unstoppable punter at the time lol). That was a great time to be alive!
He continues by saying that an “outside” supercomputer in the past wouldn’t have been powerful enough to run even the handheld game he is playing, much less crack the encryption and read any information they attained from Academy City.
This post brings back good memories. I very much enjoyed working on the mass mailers back in the day, Blazin’, Outbreak and the greatest, Epidemic xD. They took a lot of time and commitment. Crazy enough I can still find the source code for some of those projects. Good times!
-HeaT
I loved reading this whole page, brings me back. I think about those days A LOT and miss it. For those who experienced the internet at that time, will never forget the happiness AOL brought to all of us. Skipping school just because you didn’t wanna miss anything, or you had a Overhead,Guide,Host account and wanted to enjoy it before it died.. And another big memory that sticks out was phishing for internal accounts and hearing the ICQ sound go UT OH!! when someone else fell victim to your HR scam. haha
-Kes Aka BlareNation
Bofen? Dos32? The war between the two.
The Fate X art was sick. And really inspired me.
I wrote one of everything using dos32. A lot of what we did was somewhat revolutionary. Chat commands were a step toward AI while mail servers were Napster before Napster.
I was big on bitblt and designing GUIs. Adding soundfx to progz stolen from command and conquer.
I went by atomic and sat in the fate and vb rooms. Eventually got my dads account banned for life leading to me being banned from a PC. Ruined my career trajectory and now I count beans. Stupid.
I came here looking for someone that remembers Bofen. I also remember Dos32 was an extremely skilled programmer back then. But specifically, i remember Bofen releasing a (from the best of my recollection) very early version of something like P2P. It was like an evolution of the original AOL Mass Mailers, but its core logic seemed more like a P2P network within the AOL user ecosystem. Still not convinced I didn’t make it up, but I remember it being extremely impressive and ahead of what was being done at the time.
Anyway, I went by Tha Abbot or Abbot. I started programming late in the AOL scene at maybe 13 years old, and the only progs I released were for AIM, and also a couple .bas files related to it. I think I called it Abbot’s Aim. I remember having some good times chatting and sharing ideas with another programmer named Fury who released a popular AIM prog. We had some good times when AIM first hit the scene. I also remember having a couple interactions with PatOrJK way back when – always a really great guy!
hey, I remember you! I also remember Bofen, though I don’t remember any P2P app. I remember him having several apps that were popular and a really popular website, though I also remember there being a lot of drama around him. He had a few major scandals and then wound up taking his site down. I did a quick search and I briefly mentioned him in a blog post in 2008 (“Three Things to Say”). He popped into the comments and then him and dos went at it for a while. I’m too disinterested in the drama to read through it, though it’s interesting that the negative feelings were still present years after the scene was over.
I went by X-FiRE and there was a guy PuNiSHeR out of New York I used to fuck with. We started a WaReZ group called HAL.. Hackers Against Lamerz…
I’m a software developer now… Leaning back into SecOps. I don’t know if I would be where I am today if it weren’t for AOL in the 90’s.
http://lenshellprogarchive.com/progsa-m.html OG PROGRAMS! wont run on my Win 10 🙁
hey guys, just looking for some old friends from private room Macros.
My handle was roli.
i hung out with dyno, schitt, glue, low, cex, and many many more, i was like 10-15 during those times.
Roli… I’ve missed you.
holy shit roli fun to find you this way, this is zel/zelda, hung out and did plenty of dev work in pr macros. I’ve got some of your old shit, you’ll have to copy into Arial size 10 ;D
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Who’s still active. Let’s get a meeting for the old aol programmers. I use to go as Def. then earlier days I was Nugz/Nugs/Conz. I coded Conz Blazin Fire with RaRe and then Icase X by Def. then a few things with masta. Good ok day’s. I’m still here I don’t touch computers anymore but I’d love for us to all meet up at a Las Vegas fest. We can make it happen. Who’s down
Wow, you guys are awesome for even still visiting here.
-Vae aka Vaesima
vae@efnet
reidar, ran the scene news for a bit and rolled with legion, arise, premium.. some names I remember, wish efnet was still what it used to be. aol definitely was the wild west and the digital library we never expected it to be…
Wow, this brought back so many memories. What an awesome read. Fun times!
-MaRz
·im hacked v1.0· by duce and marz
This is all embarrassing and cool to see in one go.
511 being a cop is the most ironic thing I read here. I am currently an IT Director at a Fortune 500 and started in the field because of AOL. I would have assumed he and I would have the roles reversed based on PC/programming knowledge back then.
@Marz… I am not sure if you remember, but we had the first 1 IM punter out there. The HTML code was given to me by someone – I wish I could remember their name…
Be well, all!
-Duce
Still here lurking. Miss you guys. Hit me conwayent@yahoo.com
haha i remember the prog MAGENTA and HELLRASIER 3.0 and PEPSI 3.0 those where the days when the internet was fun.. programing and testing the programs in the VB private chatroom from punters to scrollers and idlers, creating my own modules for VB. Now I am a computer programmer. Never thought as a kid I would be programming as a job haha.. glad this site is still around.
I remember doing a lot of stuff for UPS back then in those rooms. Does anyone remember this awesome very low-key prog – the name of which escapes me today – but it had a very unique feature on it that I absolutely had never seen in a Proggie before: once the prog was launched you could literally write dialogue and post as another user in the room under their handle/screenname, just as long as that same exact user had that SAME very prog open on their comp. I very rarely saw that option used as the prog i’m talking about wasn’t widely distributed but it was special, trust me. Came out around the time of FateX…. in fact, I sort of remember a lot of Elitism going down around that time regarding Fate progs… as if you weren’t as “cool” if you were running around using Fate anymore.
Cyan Island Fev rec0n Oracle Kai
Oh man. AOL proggies were the beginning of my coding career. I remember getting my first account banned by being TOS’d. I ended up figuring out what it was and writing my own TOS’er in VB3 (was already a relatively experienced coder using Win32 api) and taking down the guy that TOS’d me.
I ended up making one of the first winsock crackers back in the day, SaLTines Cracker. Used to have thousands of accounts but only used one from some guy in Nebraska that never used his account, lol.
Shout out to the KaC (kix ass crew) from waaay back in ’95. #KaC and #manson666 on AOL and EFnet. My boys PuTo, Sphere, FieRy, Bew, Skab, FLame, us cracking that TOSEmail8 account and having all sorts of fun for a couple of years there.
Now I work as a top security agent for a national bank essentially reverse engineering exploits all day long. Fun stuff. You really get to see how ingenuitive people are now.
what’s up crow? Looks like a bunch of us went into IT/programming – who’d have thought? -Skab
(handle + “bo” at gmail if you want to get in touch – got a Discord with a bunch of old heads)
What’s up Crow? Just found this on a search for manson666. Just got a Discord invite from one of those guys earlier – figured I’d see who else I could find. I’ve talked to Bew most recently out of everyone you named (basically until they killed AIM). We’re still around (well most of us, anyway). -Skab
It was cool to see my programs still available – Spice1 Termer and Mercenary Killaz. I was about to release My program Jin3.0 but I lost my files and it was to be the next Magenta. I made other programs that evolved with AOL.
My Tag names: Spice 1 and DiM
I had so many < accounts and CC#s
I was 11-16 years old. Still boggles my mind. It was an open world and the Wild West.
If anybody remembers me. Comment.
I actually remember hearing about your name out there but never really chatted with you afaik
I went by THiEF
Jaguar32.bas author here :3
I’ve reached out to PatorJK and to Dos in the past, but just wanted to say hi. This scene is exactly what started my passion in programming. I hung out in the vb rooms a ton back in the day.
I went by ween –
I remember moot, nappy, imson, rash… prob more but remember those the most
Still here lurking as always. Hit me. Conwayent@yahoo.com
Krylon and by fin… Rest in peace old friend.
Mir, I used your bas file lol in one of my programs when I was first starting. That’s cool ween, I’m heavy in Powerbi and building databases, developing a stock market dashboard website and I’m using unreal engine 5 for a game. Is there a discord with all of you? I’m on aol proggies on fb but I just lurk. We all need to collaborate and build something. Please let me know about a discord page. Cheers all!
fo0 and razor what’s up!
Dude… it’s been like 20 years!
I hear they mentioned me in Yellowstone.
bing bong
=qgag room
I made a tosr that if people had it open and someone tossed someone they would all tos the douche.. ZeST was a homie but I always fuct with him private room the end
Used to make macros by “blest” I miss those days coldice and freeshit rooms. Running servers and massmailers all night long clogging up my phone line!
Are you instill in contact with MaGuS? I’d like to interview him for my podcast, AOL Underground. Also hiwind (creator of hiwind.bas) would like to talk with him about a potential role at his company. Would you be able to put me in touch?
I’ll shoot him an email. If you can shoot me an email.
Hey all. Wow. memories.
I hung out in Fate and POA chat rooms.
My handle changed a few times, but mostly used
XxMisterMofoxX
I dabbled in VB, but didnt get very far 🙂
I was pretty old back then, compared to most…early 20’s.
Now im a fed 🙂
Also have my own youtube channel where i cook stuff and blast on the drums. Search out gastro mojo.
I recall how this chat manipulation worked, if you are curious–
AOL supported HTML, and this was the source of so much fun. I created the PR room that became ever so popular during the AOL 4.0 days (PR: prøgz).
The chat manipulation worked using HTML #FEFEFE for your name, then essentially it hit the enter key, and typed right in place of the next user to type in the chat, and it set up any name you wanted, perfectly, by doing this. It was fairly simply to do, even without a prog!
I went by lølz, I’m not sure how well known I was, the stuff I got into are probably things I’de never admit to. Lucky to be here and not behind bars I suppose!
Aside from that, winsock spamming and cracking, as well as the insanely easy way of $IM_OFF and phishing for Overhead accounts was too easy.
Accessing AOL’s “MERLIN” database and cracking Host accounts was a challenge. Having “online wars”-stealing peoples 3chrs and leet names. So much fun.
CATWatch01 Has Entered The Room – insta-TOS hahahaha
You beat me to it, with the CATWatch comment ?
I was definitely there, serving and MMing, and creating chaos all over private chats.
Pepsi, Magenta, FateX, Firetoolz, Havok, and Soylent Green are some proggies that stand out, Faygo Fader was a lot of fun too.
Anyone else remember the song that played with Magenta by RedXKing(I think)?
something about OJ Simpson and his wife…
It’s great to see some of you guys are still around, and thank you for all the help over the years.
When I finally got a copy, hiwind.bas blew my mind back in the day.
SysID
Rufus / Cloud / Plague
F To The P
RiP to all those fallen
Vader Fader made by “the mark” is mark zuckerberg
cool
good read…I miss the old days.
blare, koin, r0cky, olaf, will (will’s lister anyone?), this is Nuh, and a few others were my main crew to hangout with.
Occassionally I’d hangout with Pepsi who was famous for typing in his red comic sans bold font.
Damn, I don’t even know where to begin. I guess first, as an old man now, Steve Case for creating an online network known as AOL that basically helped me escape reality and learn things I never would of learned.
Anyways, I went by so many names that I eventually just went by “Chris” rofl. Names I remember: nerf (when I did art and ran a crew — Team2k I think it was), dire (was my alter-ego to wax — did more underground things), wax (my main handle due to skating), chr15, then finally, “Chris.” (it had to be Proper case bc that is how lame I was). Funny looking back it was like an evolution of handles haha.
What actually started my obsession was when someone cloned my screenname “XxHoTsHoT13xX” or something along those lines then told me that they could get my Mom’s cc. I called shens and next thing I knew someone knocked me off my own screenname. So I told my mom the next morning bc I didn’t want her to lose all of her money lol (yes, I was very naive and only 13 at the time). Later, I got owned by Viowatch for sending me a jpg of nude Britney Spears with an Active-X exploit attached to it. He messaged me through Sub7 and we actually chatted a little bit. I told him please don’t deltree me after he told me what he was about to do — deltree me. I remember him saying, “everyone gets owned once.” and BOOM. I was fishing for my Windows discs like FUCK my mom is going to kill me. Props to Vio for getting me into the darker side of things 😛
Second was getting punted. After that, I was out for revenge. I became obsessed with how to program. No idea what a “zip” was, and just started from there. Went from making art to wanting to create a punter (never did though because I wasn’t l33t enough :x). Going onto Lenshell, Layzie’s site (I used the shit out of his HTML editor and later AOL Protocol sniffer ;)), and a little later got into actual coding, winsock, and “multi-socketing” haha. Awe man, this brings back so many damn memories. This helped balance my ADHD, transitioning through art, progs, and web design. Helped me with depression and trauma (as I’m sure a lot of you had as well). It was my drug that I just couldn’t get enough of.
I remember having floppies with progs on them and taking them to friends’ houses and what not haha. Seadoo 1IM punter was my first punter I used, then TacoBell Toolz I think was the only full prog I used because of all of the South Park character macros. Of course, I had others, but this one for some reason was my favorite.
I later met someone, Dave aka Kai, who was my mentor. He was so nice and really paved the way for me. Since he was nice to me, I was also nice to everyone I met. I gave Moony his first 3chr, which was like “CN5” or something for like a local news station. Rikky was also a big inspiration for his unique ifaces and rikky2k.net website. He gave me badass icons to use on my ifaces, etc. I started webpunk, wpunk.net, and so many more that I can’t remember. Sinz was a great friend that taught me a lot about the security side of things.
Then came the juicy stuff. I bought VB books and learned out to program, then used Planet Source Code to learn even more. I was more into doing stuff on the masses and fast (I wanted speed). PERiSH taught me about the TIC/TOC protocol, Dime and Kurupt taught me about the AOL protocol, then I was hooked. I wanted to learn anything and everything about the protocols. I stumbled upon Dos’s OSCAR AIM example which helped me create a few “progs” ;). I got into leets and 3chr sns. I had so many and tagged them all with “prj3chr.” I used < to bait, etc. etc. Then I joined the military, but that didn't stop me lol. I would hop on the SIPRnet and print out code (mostly ways to multi-thread in .net), and while on deployment I would work on the ifaces until I had a connection and start the real coding.
The good friends I remember are Bigbro, Data, Dime, R, Krazed, Kevin aka Pad, Chad aka Sano, Brett aka Illusion, Xer, Dre aka Sima, Wes aka Slice, Stephan aka Glitch (can't remember but it started with a G), Blare aka BlareNation, Rikky, Rerun, Neko, Moony, Nicon, Anti, Kez, Trez, Patrick aka Zel (started my first business with him), Chrono, Bass (met him through IM'ing my handle, "wax" — turned out to be a programmer that knew YTC (I thought that was so cool), Prophet, Mike aka Cl0wn aka Loadie (gave me my first "ticket" to call in a screenname, "Diva"), Mike aka Sinz (master of TOS and leet ifaces), PERiSH, Chuck aka Kurupt aka Teknik, Ruff (got me into learning Delphi), Adam aka Syg, Hydro (even though we sorta had beef bc of an ao-hoe lol), Mysterio, Snypa (we made some leet shit using invokes), Schm0ke, Sm0key, JeLe (even though you took "buddy" from me after we were really good friends and I trusted you), and Def (I'm so sorry for what I did to you). That is who I can really remember that I actually spoke with time to time via chat and those conferences. Which reminds me, later Kurupt and I created a conference room "generator" that actually worked.. I forgot what we named it. I could go on and on because the more I think about things the more I remember. I didn't release much, but the more public ones that had chatsends were w00t (IMAP and AIR versions), crackXP (fastest one I made using a private method but I can't remember), spamd, Who's Spamming, Biggie Smalls (pwc that changed a service entirely), and many others. I stopped creating tanks after t4nk (ty Kai) was made.
The people I really looked up to after learning a ton but never spoke with: Layzie, A2, Citric, GodsMisfit, Slushie, Seven, Future, YTC, and Tau.
Sidebar: I've always wondered who Anok and Oracle were. I was always intrigued with TK (TheKnight), and Outlaw I believe his name was (the person that made the cloner I believe?). I was very intrigued with the really private things lol.
I hung out in PRs art, vb, ixa, progz, proggies, vb5, vb6, punters, margorp, and whywork are the ones that really stand out but I'm sure there are others.
Anyways, I sit here and type this and I'm sure my ADHD is going haywire at this point bc I really want to just paste this in ChatGPT (funny, right?), but fuck it. I grew up saying, "u=".
AOL taught me how to network, research, security, analyze, decipher, and entrepreneurship.
Now, I'm an old guy with a family doing web development full-time for various companies as a contractor. I can live my life anywhere, make my own schedule, and do what I love to do — create things while also providing for my family.
If anyone would like to connect, I'm on the AOL Proggies FB group, just search for me 😉