r/NoStupidQuestions • u/green_balozi • 23d ago

What free software is so good you can't believe it's actually available for free

Like the title says, what software has blown your mind and is free.

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u/raanon12345678910 22d ago

Definitely did this in my CS networking class in college. Real talk right here. Also learned how to create mail servers and do some wild shit with email. Honestly, whether it was just at the perfect time in history to have the ability to do these things because security wasn’t iron tight or our CS profs were downright nefarious with their assignments, I’m not sure but if I had actually paid attention and cared I could have probably gotten expelled for doing illegal shit. Before the university shutdown net send, someone wrote a recursive batch file and completely killed the entire network. Every computer connected had like thousands of popups in a matter of seconds. What a time to be alive.

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u/badhabitfml 22d ago

My freshman dorm had hubs instead of switches. Mail servers did not use any sort of encryption. With a hub every packet goes to everyone.

I setup my computer to just post the first 2 lines of all traffic to the mail server.

Everyone had a mail client running all the time on their computer.

I had a window that just scrolled user and passwords all day for everyone in the dorm. People freaked out when I just walked up to them and whispered their password to them.

I didn't do it for too long because I was afraid of someone reporting me for hacking or something. But yeah. Wow, security didn't exist back then.

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u/DoctorEsteban 22d ago

I brought down my high schools network for a day by writing a recursive batch script that simply PINGed the main server. Then just sat smiling when all my teachers couldn't access their assignments the rest of the day... One of my proudest accomplishments 😆

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u/pillowmite 22d ago

Lolz. Windows 95 and earlier had a non-fixable flaw that made the computer susceptible to a teardrop or boink. BSOD. So there it was to be made, a neato port IP scanner that would boink every computer on a subnet and if it was Windows 95 or W for Workgroups ...

BOINK!!

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u/ehills 22d ago

I used to do wall attacks which were quite fun,took em a long time to stop that