AOHell

AOHell was a tool which made hack (technology slang) as easy as point-and-click.

Released sometime in 1994, AOHell provided a number of utilities which ran on top of the America Online client software. Though most of these utilities simply manipulated the AOL interface, it was plenty powerful enough to let any curious adolescent cause all sorts of havoc.

One click of the Fake Account Generator gets you on AOL with unlimited access -- the credit card number generated automatically. Good for unlimited use for 4 to 5 weeks.

It also had built in Phishing tools, which would barrage random strangers with requests like Hi, this an AOL Customer Service. We re running a security check and need to verify your account. Please enter your username and password to continue.

Pranksters often made use of the IM-bomb, which would pepper another user with IMs until AOL signed them off.

The existence of software like this even allowed AOL to develop its own Warez community. Hanging out in secret chatrooms with appropriate names like wArEzXXX , AOHell provided bots which would send out a list of software contained in their mailbox. Simply message the bot what software you d like and they d forward the relevant files to your mailbox. Since the data didn t actually have to be transmitted anywhere, the piracy was only limited by how fast you could forward massive multi-part messages to other users with AOL footing all the bandwidth costs.

The existence of software like AOHell provided a sort of parallel lite version of the hacker underground that had existed for years based around elite bulletin board systems. Programs like AOHell played an important part in defining what we now think of the Script kiddie. It s quite likely that many millions of dollars in credit card fraud were committed by kids with no real knowledge of what they were doing.

As in the linked manual, the creator of AOHell claimed to create the program because of some homosexual and pedophilia chat rooms on AOL at the time. When that program was still compatible with AOL software (the last was AOL version 2.5), many users of programs like AOHell were strongly homophobic and used such programs to disrupt homosexual chat rooms.

These types of programs, called AOHack programs tended to get AOL accounts shut down and so most users were on accounts they acquired by Phishing.

=External links=

[http://www.aolwatch.org/chronic2.htm AOHell v3.0: Rage Against The Machine Manual]