OK, let's say you are
hosting a wild party in your home. You decide to show your buddies that you are
one of those dread hacker d00dz. So you fire up your computer and what should
come up on your screen but the logo for "Windows 95." It's kind of
lame looking, isn't it? Your computer looks just like everyone else's box. Just
like some boring corporate workstation operated by some guy with an IQ in the
80s.
Now if you are a
serious hacker you would be booting up Linux or FreeBSD or some other kind of
Unix on your personal computer. But your friends don't know that. So you have
an opportunity to social engineer them into thinking you are fabulously elite
by just by customizing your bootup screen.
Now let's say you want
to boot up with a black screen with orange and yellow flames and the slogan
" K-Rad Doomsters of the Apocalypse." This turns out to be super
easy.
Now Microsoft wants you
to advertise their operating system every time you boot up. In fact, they want
this so badly that they have gone to court to try to force computer retailers
to keep the Micro$oft bootup screen on the systems these vendors sell.
So Microsoft certainly
doesn't want you messing with their bootup screen, either. So M$ has tried to
hide the bootup screen software. But they didn't hide it very well. We're going
to learn today how to totally thwart their plans.
Evil Genius tip: One of
the rewarding things about hacking is to find hidden files that try to keep you
from modifying them -- and then to mess with them anyhow. That's what we're
doing today.
The Win95 bootup
graphics is hidden in a file named c:\logo.sys. To see this file, open File
Manager, click "view", then click "by file type," then
check the box for "show hidden/system files." Then, back on
"view," click "all file details." To the right of the file
logo.sys you will see the letters "rhs." These mean this file is
"read-only, hidden, system."
The reason this
innocuous graphics file is labeled as a system file -- when it really is just a
graphics file -- is because Microsoft is afraid you'll change it to read
something like "Welcome to Windoze 95 -- Breakfast of Lusers!" So by
making it a read-only file, and hiding it, and calling it a system file as if
it were something so darn important it would destroy your computer if you were
to mess with it, Microsoft is trying to trick you into leaving it alone.
Now here's the easy way
to thwart Micro$oft and get the startup logo of your choice. We start by
finding the MSPaint program. It's probably under the accessories folder. But
just in case you're like me and keep on moving things around, here's the
fail-safe program finding routine:
1) Click "Start" on the lower left
corner of your screen.
2) Click "Windows Explorer"
3) Click "Tools"
4) Click "Find"
5) Click "files or folders"
6) After "named" type in
"MSPaint"
7) After "Look in" type in 'C:"
8) Check the box that says "include
subfolders"
9) Click "find now"
10)Double click on the icon of a paint bucket that turns up in a window.
This loads the paint program.
11)Within the paint program, click "file"
12)Click "open" OK, now you have MSPaint. Now you have a super
easy way to create your new bootup screen:
13)13) After "file
name" type in c:\windows\logos.sys. This brings up the graphic you get
when your computer is ready to shut down saying "It's now safe to turn off
your computer." This graphic has exactly the right format to be used for
your startup graphic. So you can play with it any way you want (so long as you
don't do anything on the Attributes screen under the Images menu) and use it
for your startup graphic.
14)14) Now we play with this
picture. Just experiment with the controls of MSPaint and try out fun stuff.
15)15) When you decide you really
like your picture (fill it with frightening hacker stuph, right?), save it as
c:\logo.sys. This will overwrite the Windows startup logo file. From now on,
any time you want to change your startup logo, you will be able to both read
and write the file logo.sys.
16)16. If you want to change the
shut down screens, they are easy to find and modify using MSPaint. The
beginning shutdown screen is named c:\windows\logow.sys. As we saw above, the
final "It's now safe to turn off
your computer" screen graphic is named c:\windows\logos.sys.
17)17. To make graphics that will
be available for your wallpaper, name them something like
c:\windows\evilhaxor.bmp (substituting your filename for "exilhaxor"
-- unless you like to name your wallpaper "evilhaxor.")
Evil Genius tip: The
Microsoft Windows 95 startup screen has an animated bar at the bottom. But once
you replace it with your own graphic, that animation is gone. However, you can
make your own animated startup screen using the shareware program BMP Wizard.
Some download sites for this goodie include:
http://www.pippin.com/English/ComputersSoftware/Software/Windows95/graphic.htm
http://search.windows95.com/apps/editors.html
http://www.windows95.com/apps/editors.html
Now the trouble with
using one of the existing Win95 logo files is that they only allow you to use
their original colors. If you really want to go wild, open MSPaint again. First
click "Image," then click "attributes." Set width 320 and
height to 400. Make sure under Units that Pels is selected. Now you are free to
use any color combination available in this program. Remember to save the file
as c:\logo.sys for your startup logo, or
c:\windows\logow.sys and or c:\windows\logos.sys for your shutdown
screens.
But if you want some
really fabulous stuff for your starting screen, you can steal graphics from
your favorite hacker page on the Web and import them into Win95's startup and
shutdown screens. Here's how you do it.
1) Wow, kewl graphics! Stop your browsing on that
Web page and hit the "print screen" button.
2) Open MSPaint and set width to 320 and height to
400 with units Pels.
3) Click edit, then click paste. Bam, that image
is now in your MSPaint program.
4) When you save it, make sure attributes are
still 320X400 Pels. Name it c:\logo.sys, c:\windows\logow.sys,
c:\windows\logos.sys, or c:\winodws\evilhaxor.bmp depending on which screen or
wallpaper you want to display it on.
Of course you can do
the same thing by opening any graphics file you choose in MSPaint or any other
graphics program, so long as you save it with the right file name in the right
directory and size it 320X400 Pels.
Oh, no, stuffy Auntie
Suzie is coming to visit and she wants to use my computer to read her
email! I'll never hear the end of it if
she sees my K-Rad Doomsters of the Apocalypse startup screen!!!
Here's what you can do
to get your boring Micro$oft startup logo back. Just change the name of
c:logo.sys to something innocuous that Aunt Suzie won't see while snooping with
file manager. Something like logo.bak. Guess what happens? Those Microsoft guys
figured we'd be doing things like this and hid a copy of their boring bootup
screen in a file named "io.sys." So if you rename or delete their
original logo.sys, and there is no file by that name left, on bootup your
computer displays their same old Windows 95 bootup screen.
Evil genius tip: Want
to mess with io.sys or logo.sys? Here's how to get into them. And, guess what,
this is a great thing to learn in case you ever need to break into a Windows
computer -- something we'll look at in detail in the next section.
Click "Start"
then "Programs" then "MS-DOS." At the MS_DOS prompt enter
the commands:
ATTRIB -R -H -S
C:\IO.SYS
ATTRIB -R -H -S
C:\LOGO.SYS
Now they are totally at
your mercy, muhahaha!
OK, that's it for
now. You 31337 hackers who are feeling
insulted by reading this because it was too easy, tough cookies. I warned you.
But I'll bet my box has a happier hacker logon graphic than yours does. K-Rad
Doomsters of the apocalypse, yesss!
Want to see back issues
of Guide to (mostly) Harmless Hacking? See either
http://www.tacd.com/zines/gtmhh/
or
http://ra.nilenet.com/~mjl/hacks/codez.htm
or
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/loukas.halo8/HappyHacker/
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Direct flames to
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Ooops! We had a period
on a line by itself followed by return which made the SMTP port think it had
gotten the end of the message. Shoot, all the good stuff came after it! Now
this time you get enough to learn the hacker way to edit Windows Registries and
trash your CMOS, heh,heh...
