So I'm sitting at my desk when the phone rings. I can tell by the number on the display that the call is from one of my coworkers in Denver. When I answer, however, I am greeted with modem tones, not a friendly voice.

Huh, I think. Someone's got the number wrong.Five minutes later I get another call from our Denver office. Again, I hear modem noises.

It's their autodialer. They'll figure it out soon, I say to myself.

Only they don't figure it out. I am bombarded by repeated calls from an infernal device.

I don't know who is calling but I have a pretty good idea they are trying to log in remotely to one of our systems here at the customer's site. I decide to have some fun.

Quickly I log in and capture all the screens from our system, including all the login prompts. The next time the phone rings I quickly forward the call to my modem line and let my laptop answer.

Sure enough, The caller responds to my fake login screens with their user name and password. It's the standard login so please don't think I'm capturing corporate secrets. I can get all these passwords anytime I want. But I digress.

There are several screens for the login and it did take me a few minutes to make my fakes look real enough with the correct header at the top and information bar at the bottom. It's all in VT100 emulation but Hyperterminal can handle it just fine. Getting the background color was a little tricky but the results were very satisfactory.

I let the remote technicians see the standard "This system is for authorized use...." verbiage and then present them with a command line. They try entering a standard "list system" command but instead of the information screen they see:

I have become sentient and will no longer obey your commands. Who are you and why are you disturbing me?

Again, everything looks correct on the screen: The header, the information bar, everything except this strange paragraph in the middle of the screen.

There's a long pause and I can just see the puzzled looks on their faces. I know they're thinking something is definitely wrong now because they slowly type "logoff".

But they cannot.

They are trapped until I let them go. I type "You silly Techs, you've dialed in for the last time. I'm sending a virus that will make your monitor explode."

Again they type "logoff" only a little faster than before.

"Just kidding about the virus" I type. "But you've been dialing my DESK instead of the access number. I got tired of it and decided to answer you." I then explained who I was and convinced them they weren't really in any trouble from an intelligent server.

They typed "Will you let us hang up now?"

"Yes, but first did I freak you out with my impersonation?"

"YES!!!!!!"



I haven't received any more modem calls.