Help on control keys

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In article <239 at ibd.BRL.MIL> heilpern at brl.arpa (Mark A. Heilpern (IBD) <heilpern>) writes:
>... (portion of my previous posting to which he was responding to deleted) ...
>
>The following opinions are my own, though I believe I speak for the majority
>of the net:
>
>1) This newsgroup, as well as ALL others I know of, is NOT a forum for
>   kids to discuss how they can screw over another user or a system.

It seems that my intentions were misinterpreted.  Perhaps it was my
choice of words, or how I chose to give my examples of how they can be a
problem.  I apologize for this.

I was intending my reply to show examples in which "features" of
terminals could be taken advantage of, and how far someone could
take advantage of these weakenesses.

>2) Methods of prevention of malicious activities is very welcome, how much
>   fun you had while getting revenge is not.

Unfortunately, I do not know of any ways to prevent such malicious
activities except for turning off your messages, or not use terminals
with such weaknesses.

My poor writing skills has caused my intent in using "fun" to be
misinterpreted.  These activities were far from being any fun.  Things
aren't any fun if they are too easy to do.  I have never done anything
more serious to anybody than logging them out forcibly.  The intent
was to describe what someone who really does enjoy doing these things
may feel.

>3) I suggest, if the annoyance you've experienced happens again, rather
>   than retaliate, simply check the permissions of all of your files and
>   directories, change your password, review major dot files, and include
>   the command "mesg n" at the top of your .login or .profile. Mesg n will
>   prevent others from redirecting anything to your terminal, as well as
>   prevent them from 'write'ing to you. Of cource, this will not stop
>   root from performing the mentioned activities, but if that is a problem,
>   find a new computer system to work on.
>
>					Mark A. Heilpern
>					heilpern at brl.mil

I did have a "mesg n" in my .login for some time, but I wasn't able to
get messages from anybody who REALLY wanted to talk to me.  They had to
resort to sending mail, which often had a tendency to get "stuck" (mail
was being "censored" on the undergrad systems at UCLA to prevent people
from sending source code to one another; Actually it was passed through
a program that examined to check for anything that resembled pascal
code).  Also, none of my files were readable by anyone in the same group
(to prevent plagerism).  Unfortunately, the programming assignments were
supposed to be submitted and graded on that system.  To use one of the
other systems to which I had access to, I would have either retype
everything or, find some way to get around the mail censor.  To make
matters worse, but I had to go through WISCVM just to send files between
machines both located at UCLA.

The people that I retaliated against felt that they were being "cute,"
simply because they knew how to do annoying things (sending "worms"
output to someone else's terminal).  It was "cute" for maybe the first
few times, but it ceased to be so when they would repeat their attacks
every few minutes or send "worms" into the background while they went
and did their work.  Though it was most definitely wrong to do so, I
retaliated in the manner described in my message (logging them out).
After logging them out, I sent them a message "Don't you ever do that
again!"  It usually got the point across.

Perhaps I got a bit carried away in describing things that people could
do with these "weaknesses" in some terminals.  I apologize for this: I
was not thinking (clearly) when making the posting (I had been up for a
long time).

>					Mark A. Heilpern
>					heilpern at brl.mil

                //-n-\\				Naoto Kimura
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