AOHell was a tool which greatly simplified 'cracking' online using AOL. Cracking-divides a group’s voters into other districts, where they will be ineffective minorities; and kidnapping places two incumbents from the same party in the same district. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...

Released in 1994 by a cracker known as "Da Chronic", AOHell provided a number of utilities which ran on top of the America Online client software. Though most of these utilities simply manipulated the AOL interface, it was powerful enough to let any curious party anonymously cause havoc on AOL. Upon loading, the program played a short clip from the song Nuthin' But a "G" Thang. 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal. // Events January Bill Clinton January 1 : North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes into effect. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... Nuthin But a G Thang is a 1993 hit song by American gangsta rapper Dr. Dre, from his debut solo album, The Chronic. ...

Some of the features included were:

• A fake account generator which would generate a new, fully-functional AOL account for the user that lasted for about 4 to 5 weeks. This generator worked by exploiting the algorithm used by credit card companies known as the Luhn algorithm to dynamically generate apparently legitimate credit card numbers. The account would not be disabled until AOL first billed it (and discovered that the credit card was invalid). The generator could also generate fake addresses and phone numbers, and at first-glance, the area codes and zip codes would appear to match real area codes and zip codes for the cities and states of the fake addresses;
• Phishing tools, which would barrage random AOL users with messages like "Hi, this an AOL Customer Service. We're running a security check and need to verify your account. Please enter your username and password to continue." in the hope that victims would inadvertantly give the phishers access to their accounts;
• An 'IM-bomb', which would spam another user with instant messages until AOL signed them off;
• A mail bomb script which would rapidly send e-mails to a user's inbox until it was full;
• A flooding script that would flood a chat room with ASCII art of an offensive nature, such as the finger or a toilet;
• An 'artificial intelligence bot', which did not really contain artificial intelligence, but had the ability to automatically respond to a message in a chatroom upon identification of keywords (for example, a 'profane language' autoresponse was built-in to the program);
• An 'IM manager', which provided facilities to automatically respond to or block IMs from certain users;

The existence of AOHell and similar software even allowed AOL to develop its own warez community. Lurking in secret chat rooms with appropriate names like 'wArEzXXX', AOHell created bots which would send out a list of warez (pirated software) contained in their mailbox. Simply messaging the bot with the titles of the desired software packaging would result in those packages being forwarded to your mailbox. Since the data merely had to be copied into another user's mailbox (still resident on an AOL server), the piracy was only limited by how fast messages could be forwarded, with AOL footing all the bandwidth costs. Flowcharts are often used to represent algorithms. ... The Luhn algorithm or Luhn formula, also known as the modulus 10 or mod 10 algorithm, was developed in the 1960s as a method of validating identification numbers. ... Credit cards An array of various credit cards. ... This phishing attempt, disguised as an official email from a (fictional) bank, attempts to trick the banks members into giving away their account information by confirming it at the phishers linked website. ... A screenshot of PowWow, one of the first instant messengers with a graphical user interface Instant messaging is the act of instantly communicating between two or more people over a network such as the Internet. ... Messaging spam, sometimes called SPIM, is a type of spam where the target is instant messaging services. ... ASCII art, an artistic medium relying primarily on computers for presentation, consists of pictures pieced together from characters (preferably from the 95 printable characters defined by ASCII). ... This article is about the gesture. ... Hondas intelligent humanoid robot AI redirects here. ... A street vendor packing up his display of counterfeit CDs after being photographed. ... In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom or other interactive system, but rarely participates. ... A chat room is an online forum where people can chat online (talk by broadcasting messages to people on the same forum in real time). ... The copyright infringement of software is often called software piracy by those seeking to reduce its incidence. ...

The existence of software like AOHell provided a sort of parallel 'lite' version of the hacker underground that had existed for years before, based around bulletin board systems. Programs like AOHell played an important part in defining the 'script kiddie', a user who performs basic cracking using simple tools written by others, with little understanding of what they are doing. A bulletin board system or BBS is a computer system running software that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line and, using a terminal program, perform functions such as downloading software and data, uploading data, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users. ... In computing, a script kiddie (occasionally script bunny, script kitty or skiddie) is a derogatory term for inexperienced crackers who use scripts and programs developed by others, without knowing what they are or how they work, for the purpose of compromising computer accounts and files, and for launching attacks on... Cracking-divides a group’s voters into other districts, where they will be ineffective minorities; and kidnapping places two incumbents from the same party in the same district. ...

In the manual [1], the creator of AOHell claims that he created the program because the AOL administrators would frequently shut down hacker and warez chatrooms for violation of AOL's terms of service while refusing to shut down the pedophilia chat rooms which regularly traded pornography. Da Chronic claimed when he confronted AOL's TOSAdvisor about it, he was met with an account deletion. His goal was to have "20,000+ idiots using AOHell to knock people offline, steal passwords and credit card information, and to basically annoy the hell out of everyone". The program was last compatible with AOL version 2.5. Pedophilia, paedophilia, or pædophilia (see spelling differences), is the paraphilia of being sexually attracted primarily or exclusively to pre-pubescent children. ...

These types of programs, called AOHack programs tended to get AOL accounts shut down and so most users were on accounts they acquired illicitly either by phishing or a fake account generator as mentioned above. AOHack programs were add-on programs to America Online that violated their Terms of Service, performed illegal activities, and disrupted the service. ... This phishing attempt, disguised as an official email from a (fictional) bank, attempts to trick the banks members into giving away their account information by confirming it at the phishers linked website. ...

External links

• Manual for AOHell v3.0