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When I was in junior high, my friends and I discovered that a Command Prompt command called net send was enabled on our school network. AIM and similar services were blocked, but if we wanted to send messages to each other we could open up the Command Prompt and type something like:
The computer names were predictable, something like lab + room number + computer number, and the computer numbers were physically written on the machines themselves. It was pretty clunky, and there was no scrollback, but it was a fun way to goof off during class by sending each other short messages.
We quickly discovered a few interesting characteristics of net send that could be used for some silliness. For one, the alert dialog that opened up stole keyboard focus and was generally disruptive. You could spam as many net send commands as you wanted and the alerts would just pile up on a user’s screen, with no clear way to dismiss them all. We took advantage of this by mashing up and enter as well as writing batch scripts to render our friends’ computers useless. Eventually a tense truce was called, when we found out that receiving a net send message while playing the hidden copy of Unreal Tournament GOTY we had installed on the school network would temporarily take the player out of the game for just long enough to be killed in a critical moment.
The most creative exploit we came up with for net send was on students (and teachers) who weren’t yet aware of the feature. We had the ability to open an official windows alert on anyone’s machine, and at a glance it wasn’t obvious these messages were coming from another computer on the network. We started sending messages like “Critical Error: Please Restart Your Computer Immediately” and would watch with glee as our victim sighed deeply before restarting their computer.
