Script Kiddie? What is the origin of this term for kids playing at being hackers? (film ~9 minutes)
In his latest video, LiveOverflow delves into the origin of the term 'scriptkitty' and the history of hacker culture. The author admits that he did not have the opportunity to directly experience this culture, as he was born in the early 90s. He highlights that although he lacks personal experiences, he is passionate about exploring publicly available historical records. He emphasizes the importance of this information to better understand the community built around hacking and to honor those who contributed to its development. His research begins with the examination of the Phrak archive, the oldest zine in this domain, founded in 1985, making it a crucial historical source for anyone interested in hacking.
The video references essential texts like the 'Hacker Manifesto' from 1986, written by a hooded teenager known as The Mentor. These reflections proved influential in shaping hacker culture, revealing that this subculture is far more emotional and complex than commonly assumed. Through the gathered data, LiveOverflow aims to convey the essence of this culture and the emotions experienced by its pioneers. He points towards the earliest mentions of 'scriptkitty' he managed to find. Although this term initially appears linked to the frivolous use of scripts by novices, it shows how it evolved over the years.
The author investigated the actual origins of 'scriptkitty' and, using tools like wget and grep, sifted through the Phrak archive. He discovered that 'scriptkitty' first appeared in 1998, aligning with the hacker culture of the 90s. It is intriguing that while the topic has evolved, values such as theft and improper use of scripts remain relevant today, as many use this term without awareness of its historical context. By uncovering the true roots of this term, LiveOverflow not only expands his knowledge but also shares it with his viewers, contributing to the historical narrative of this culture.
During his search, the author also stumbled upon other text archives, including textfiles.com, which hosts a vast collection of documents related to hacker culture. By browsing this collection, LiveOverflow found intriguing references from the 90s, such as 'kitties,' which indicated young hackers utilizing simple scripts. These references imply that the term 'scriptkitty' might have originated even in the 90s, which aids in gaining a broader understanding of the significance of these terms. LiveOverflow encourages his viewers to carry out their own research and exploration so that the history of this fascinating subculture is not forgotten.
Finally, LiveOverflow summarizes the results of his research and underscores the importance of gathering information about the past in hacker culture. He also mentions current statistics about the video, which has already garnered 146073 views and 5922 likes. Such figures are noteworthy, especially as they reflect the growing interest in the history of hacking and the appreciation of its cultural context by modern viewers. This serves as a reminder that the history of hacker culture is by no means forgotten. Each of us can be part of this story by sharing our experiences and narratives related to this unique subculture.
Toggle timeline summary
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Introduction of the slogan 'don't be a scriptkitty'.
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Discussion of a YouTube comment questioning the slogan.
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Query about the term's origin related to Mr. Robot.
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Exploration of the term 'scriptkitty' and hacker culture.
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Introduction to Phrak, a significant resource in hacking history.
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Historical significance of Phrak starting in 1985.
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Mentions of the hacker manifesto from 1986.
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Reference to a 2002 talk by The Mentor reflecting on hacker culture.
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Overview of downloading Phrak archives for research.
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Finding the earliest mention of 'scriptkitty' in 1998.
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Discussion of scriptkitties involving hacking incidents.
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Earlier uses of 'kitties' instead of 'scriptkitty' found in 1993.
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Emergence of 'codeskitties' in discussions from 1994.
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Discovery of a literal use of 'scriptkitty' in a 1996 exploit.
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Finding old pictures of hackers from 1996-97.
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Declaration of the 1996 exploit as the first use of 'scriptkitty'.
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Invitation for stories about 90s hacking experiences.
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Closing statements emphasizing the importance of sharing stories.
Transcription
In my early videos I used the slogan, don't be a scriptkitty, in the intro. And quite some time ago I got the following youtube comment about it. Don't be a scriptkitty? Is a reference to Mr. Robot? Or is it already a thing in general? Well huh. I think it would be interesting to look for the origin of the term scriptkitty and at the same time get a glimpse into some hacker culture history. I think this is interesting because it gives us an excuse to look into the past to better understand on what our community is built upon and somewhat honor and remember it. I wish I was old enough to have experienced the time myself to tell you first hand stories, but unfortunately I am born in the early 90s and so I am merely an observer and explorer of the publicly available historical records. But there is fascinating stuff out there that I want to share with you. The first resource I wanted to check is Phrak. I've referenced Phrak many times before, because I think it's the longest running esign with quality content. And the cool thing is that these issues started in 1985 by TerranKing and NightLightning. So it has been part of hacking history from pretty early on and I highly encourage you to just randomly click around those old issues and read some articles. You will find stuff about operating systems and various technologies you might have never heard about, because they basically don't exist anymore. But you also find traces of the humans behind all this through the Phrak profiles and other articles. Maybe check out the famous hacker manifesto from 1986, The Conscience of a Hacker. It was written by a teenager calling himself the mentor, who probably never thought that his rage induced philosophical writing would go on to influence a whole generation of hackers. But it becomes even more fascinating with the privilege of being here in the future. Right now. And looking back. I found this talk from 2002 by The Mentor. He is now a grown man reflecting on his experience about this. It's emotional and human. And in the end this is what the hacker culture is. It's full of humans with complex emotions. We shouldn't forget that. Anyway, I'm getting really distracted here. But there are not enough opportunities to expose people to this stuff. Back to script kitty research. We can simply wget the archive from phrak.org, "-r recursive crawling", "-l only two layers deep", and "-np for no parent folders". This takes a moment to download. And then we can grep. Let's start with simply scriptkitty. The oldest occurrence of scriptkitty we can find is from issue 54, released in 1998. Article 9 and 11. When someone posts say a root hole in some comset daemon, our little cracker could grep his list for UDP port 512 and Solaris 2.6 and he immediately has pages and pages of rootable boxes. It should be noted that this is scriptkitty behavior. And the other is a sarcastic comment about rootshell.com being hacked and then them handing over the data to law enforcement. Let's give out scripts that help every clueless scriptkitty break into thousands of sites worldwide, then narc off the one that breaks into us. But this issue is from 1998. Still the 90s, but I'm sure there have been earlier occurrences. And we should maybe start looking for slight variations that I think are still valid. For example scriptkitty with a y, but there is not much. So I was searching for just kitty, which might help us to find other variations including scriptkitty with a k, or skitty, or scriptkitty with a dash. But the only earlier occurrences that we have is just of kitties. For example in issue 12 from 87. I've been freaking since these kitties were still messing their diaper. But that's not quite the scriptkitty terminology. I think we have to expand and look somewhere else. Wikipedia is often pretty good with information and references, but unfortunately there are only links going back to the 2000s. While looking for more text files to search through, I stumbled over this repository by fdisku with a larger collection of zines. However there was not really anything much older than our 1998 frag article. Then I also looked at the textfiles.com archive, which is ran by Jason Scott. And he has a huge archive of old zines and bulletin boards, mailing lists and more. And so I started to search through that, and indeed I found some interesting traces from around 1993-1994 in a bbs called WABS. Yet another bulletin board system, created by Alex Wetmore in 1991 at Carnegie Mellon. The first interesting find is from October 1993. Enjoy your k-red elite codes kitties. The term kitty is not prefixed with scriptkitty, and I'm not sure if it's elite code, kitties, or elite code kitties. But code and script is almost synonymous and it seems to be used in a very similar derogatory way as the modern terminology. In December 1993 the term kitties is also used in relation to rip them off, which is also a typical meaning of scriptkitties nowadays. They just steal and take other people's work. And then in June 1994 there is this codeskitties just don't seem to understand that those scripts had to come from somewhere. Hacking has fizzled down to kids running scripts to show off at a 2600 meet. There is again a reference to codeskitties, but now the term script also starts to appear in the same sentence. And then in July 1994 it got combined to even 99% of the wanker scriptcodeskitties knows enough to run scripts on the department of defense. Isn't that fascinating? I start to believe that 1994 is the year where the term scriptkitty started to appear. But this example is still not 100% the modern term. And so the earliest usage of literally scriptkitty I was only able to find in an exploit from 1996. Crontab has a bug. You run crontab-e, then you got a shell, relink the temp file that crontab is having you edit, and presto it is now your property. This bug has been confirmed on various versions of OSF1, Digital Unix and AIX. If while running my script you somehow manage to mangle up your whole system, or perhaps do something stupid that will place you in jail, then neither I, nor SirPsycho, nor the other fine folks of root are responsible. Unfortunately I hope my script eats your cat and causes swarms of locusts to descend upon you, but I'm not responsible if they do. Signed Kmem. Scriptkitties cut here. There it is. This bug was discovered by SirPsycho on Thursday the 21st of March of 1996. Just after midnight. I guess nothing has changed with hacking into the night. And this exploit script was written by Kmem. You know what's cool? With a bit of digging I actually found party pictures from around 1996-97 from Kmem and SirPsycho. I find it fascinating to look at these, and I'm so grateful that there was some record keeping with pictures from that time, that takes away some of the mysticism that surrounded these early hackers. They look like normal dudes. But anyway. Is this really the first time that somebody used the term scriptkitty? Is this where it all started? Well when I was asking around, somebody reminded me of Cunningham's Law. The best way to get the right answer on the internet, is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer. So I declare this exploit to be the first usage of the term scriptkitty. It's a fact. Let's see if it works. I'm aware that a lot of the hacking culture happened in private boards, forums and chatrooms. Hopefully somebody out there has old non-public IRC logs and can grab over it for us. I think it would be really cool to trace this further. Also I would love to hear the story behind any exploits from the 90s. How did you find it? Did you share it? How did you learn it? What kind of research did you do yourself? Who was influential to you? Did anybody steal it? Were there bug collisions? What was it like to experience a buffer overflow for the first time? And so forth. I think there are many fascinating stories hidden behind those signs and exploits from that time and that haven't been told. And I don't want them to be forgotten. Please share your story. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.