where did your screen name come from? - ZEFRANK.COM

xerocs · 07-31-2003, 08:24 AM

my screen name was actually adapted from the following story... I took it when i was mushing on the college computers in 1993 and it has been with me ever since... how about yours? is there any specific meaning?

Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at Motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a portion of the program in `master mode' (supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply. The program could then poke a large value into its `privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. In short, the barn door was wide open.
Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an official `level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with an intended urgency of `needs to be fixed yesterday'). Because the text of each SIDR was entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as `Security SIDR', and attached all of the necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc.

The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the necessary operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official patch.

Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security safeguards could be subverted.

They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood' and `Friar Tuck'. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as `ghost jobs' (daemons, in Unix terminology); they would use the existing loophole to subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then keep an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the system operator (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them.

One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena. These included the following:

Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of a job.
Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they would attempt to walk across the floor (see walking drives).
The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself and punch a lace card. These would usually jam in the punch.
The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.
The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A (unless a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into stacker B). One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some code to the card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would flip over to the opposite stacker. As a result, card decks would divide themselves in half when they were read, leaving the operator to recollate them manually.
Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. They found the bandit ghost jobs running, and gunned them... and were once again surprised. When Robin Hood was gunned, the following sequence of events took place:

!X id1

id1: Friar Tuck... I am under attack! Pray save me!
id1: Off (aborted)

id2: Fear not, friend Robin! I shall rout the Sheriff
of Nottingham's men!

id1: Thank you, my good fellow!

Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program within a few milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system.

Finally, the system programmers did the latter -- only to find that the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It turned out that these two programs had patched the boot-time OS image (the kernel file, in Unix terms) and had added themselves to the list of programs that were to be started at boot time (this is similar to the way MS-DOS viruses propagate).

The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when the system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and reinstalled the monitor. Not long thereafter, Xerox released a patch for this problem.

It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola's management about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question. It is not recorded that any serious disciplinary action was taken against either of them

chuckie egg · 07-31-2003, 08:27 AM

Mines from the old computer game... Chuckie Egg (surprisingly)

Theres been a thread on this subject previously, but a lot of new members have joined since then.....

bealeblues · 07-31-2003, 08:30 AM

mine is from beale street in memphis, and the blues is simple enough-- the blues played on beale street....

Frieda · 07-31-2003, 08:33 AM

mine's just stupid, no story whatsoever! not even my real name.. isn't that weird?

chuckie egg · 07-31-2003, 08:36 AM

Haha!!

Frieda · 07-31-2003, 08:37 AM

seriously, i'm probably the only one that has no story behind a screen name.. lol

malina · 07-31-2003, 08:49 AM

mine means raspberry in polish and is also the name of my goddaughter

AllegroNg · 07-31-2003, 10:20 AM

Allegro coz it means lively and upbeat

Ng coz it's my name

And AllegroNg is my favorite in a lot of concertos

priceyfatprude · 07-31-2003, 10:25 AM

cheapskinnywhor registered.

I thought that was the dumbest name of the century, so I had to come up w/something equally as dumb, but the opposite.

AllegroNg · 07-31-2003, 10:42 AM

I think your story is my fave, PFP

dinzdale · 07-31-2003, 10:42 AM

Monty Python Sketch when I was young...
The Pirranah Brothers, Doug & Dinsdale

been my nickname for 25 yrs

agentsmith · 02-20-2005, 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dinzdale

Monty Python Sketch when I was young...
The Pirranah Brothers, Doug & Dinsdale

been my nickname for 25 yrs

i saw that sketch a few months ago and couldnt stop cracking up because i kept thinking of you.

zenbabe · 05-06-2007, 03:00 PM

lukkucairi · 05-06-2007, 03:21 PM

resurrection or renaissance?

my screen name: lukku cairi, "island people" in the language of an exterminated culture. kinda sad.

Veruki · 05-07-2007, 01:31 AM

I have this crazy thing for goats. In an attempt to win my heart my boyfriend bought me a goat name Veruka about 10 years ago. The goat lived on his father's farm and the poor old thing couldn't get her name right,so it became Veruki.

07-31-2003, 08:24 AM	#1
xerocs Lurk Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Rapid City, SoDak Posts: 1,341	where did your screen name come from? my screen name was actually adapted from the following story... I took it when i was mushing on the college computers in 1993 and it has been with me ever since... how about yours? is there any specific meaning? Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at Motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack system security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system. Through a simple programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick the system into running a portion of the program in `master mode' (supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply. The program could then poke a large value into its `privilege level' byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass all levels of security within the file-management system, patch the system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things. In short, the barn door was wide open. Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an official `level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with an intended urgency of `needs to be fixed yesterday'). Because the text of each SIDR was entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of people, Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply reported the problem as `Security SIDR', and attached all of the necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc. The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the necessary operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an official patch. Months passed. The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox field-support rep, to no avail. Finally they decided to take direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security safeguards could be subverted. They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a thoroughly devilish set of patches. These patches were then incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood' and `Friar Tuck'. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as `ghost jobs' (daemons, in Unix terminology); they would use the existing loophole to subvert system security, install the necessary patches, and then keep an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the system operator (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them. One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of unusual phenomena. These included the following: Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the middle of a job. Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they would attempt to walk across the floor (see walking drives). The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of itself and punch a lace card. These would usually jam in the punch. The console would print snide and insulting messages from Robin Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa. The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A (unless a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was placed into stacker B). One of the patches installed by the ghosts added some code to the card-reader driver... after reading a card, it would flip over to the opposite stacker. As a result, card decks would divide themselves in half when they were read, leaving the operator to recollate them manually. Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers. They found the bandit ghost jobs running, and gunned them... and were once again surprised. When Robin Hood was gunned, the following sequence of events took place: !X id1 id1: Friar Tuck... I am under attack! Pray save me! id1: Off (aborted) id2: Fear not, friend Robin! I shall rout the Sheriff of Nottingham's men! id1: Thank you, my good fellow! Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program within a few milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash the system. Finally, the system programmers did the latter -- only to find that the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted! It turned out that these two programs had patched the boot-time OS image (the kernel file, in Unix terms) and had added themselves to the list of programs that were to be started at boot time (this is similar to the way MS-DOS viruses propagate). The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when the system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and reinstalled the monitor. Not long thereafter, Xerox released a patch for this problem. It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola's management about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question. It is not recorded that any serious disciplinary action was taken against either of them

07-31-2003, 08:30 AM	#3
bealeblues where's my salt? Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: finally writing Posts: 6,929	mine is from beale street in memphis, and the blues is simple enough-- the blues played on beale street.... __________________ still jackasinine, make no mistake

07-31-2003, 08:33 AM	#4
Frieda in limbo Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 19,503	mine's just stupid, no story whatsoever! not even my real name.. isn't that weird? __________________ zoek waar je wil, maar het zit in jezelf oh yeah

07-31-2003, 08:37 AM	#6
Frieda in limbo Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 19,503	seriously, i'm probably the only one that has no story behind a screen name.. lol __________________ zoek waar je wil, maar het zit in jezelf oh yeah

07-31-2003, 10:25 AM	#9
priceyfatprude girthy pickles Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: under your desk Posts: 9,313	cheapskinnywhor registered. I thought that was the dumbest name of the century, so I had to come up w/something equally as dumb, but the opposite. __________________ "We like your board's features...but don't care about it's people"

07-31-2003, 08:27 AM	#2
chuckie egg a peach Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Manchester, UK Posts: 4,627	Mines from the old computer game... Chuckie Egg (surprisingly) Theres been a thread on this subject previously, but a lot of new members have joined since then.....

07-31-2003, 08:36 AM	#5
chuckie egg a peach Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Manchester, UK Posts: 4,627	Haha!!

07-31-2003, 08:49 AM	#7
malina leaving Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: up on the hill Posts: 6,013	mine means raspberry in polish and is also the name of my goddaughter

07-31-2003, 10:20 AM	#8
AllegroNg What I Am Wearing. Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Near DC Posts: 2,573	Allegro coz it means lively and upbeat Ng coz it's my name And AllegroNg is my favorite in a lot of concertos

07-31-2003, 10:42 AM	#10
AllegroNg What I Am Wearing. Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Near DC Posts: 2,573	I think your story is my fave, PFP

07-31-2003, 10:42 AM	#11
dinzdale King of the špatnýs Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: was that dog Posts: 9,411	Monty Python Sketch when I was young... The Pirranah Brothers, Doug & Dinsdale been my nickname for 25 yrs

05-06-2007, 03:00 PM	#13
zenbabe Lollypop! Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: we are all made of stars Posts: 11,690	bump __________________ Be yourself, because the people that mind don't matter, and the people that matter don't mind. -Dr. Seuss

05-06-2007, 03:21 PM	#14
lukkucairi earth worker Join Date: May 2006 Location: on the planet Posts: 5,844	resurrection or renaissance? my screen name: lukku cairi, "island people" in the language of an exterminated culture. kinda sad.

05-07-2007, 01:31 AM	#15
Veruki hint of olive Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 833	I have this crazy thing for goats. In an attempt to win my heart my boyfriend bought me a goat name Veruka about 10 years ago. The goat lived on his father's farm and the poor old thing couldn't get her name right,so it became Veruki. __________________ Mein Führer! I can walk! -Dr. Strangelove Last edited by Veruki : 05-08-2007 at 04:04 PM.

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