Those days were a magical time for a teenager poking around. A lot of things were directly connected to the ‘net without a firewall or behind a NAT gateway. I wish I had the knowledge I have today back then.
I remember vividly. A friend literally "owned" a few local universities that had lax security, then gave out credentials to a bunch of other teens on some underground BBSes. They were hogging all the modem pools, compiling their own IRC clients on the university Sun boxes, and causing general mayhem. This went on for a while until they finally locked things down. The late 80's, early 90's were crazy times.
