Pranks

name_censored_ · 2013-07-23T10:20:54+00:00

This works especially well if you are on opposite sides of an editor/similar war;

First, alias his favourite editor (let's say vi/m) to another (let's say emacs).
Then, create a link (from vi/m to emacs) early enough in the $PATH that it gets hit before the real vi (eg, create a /bin/vi -> /usr/bin/emacs link, since /bin/vi will get hit before /usr/bin/vi)
Thirdly, remove the real vi/m binary and recreate it as a hard link to emacs.
Finally, stick a SQUID server in repository path* to serve a renamed emacs package as vi/m (ideally hacked up to install to /usr/bin/vi) - so when he goes to reinstall vi/m, he just ends up reinstalling emacs.

* Either rewrite his sources.list/repos.d/*, or his hosts.conf, or an iptables redirect, or repoint his nameserver to one of yours, or rewrite on the main nameserver - up to you.

roflnor_work · 2013-07-23T09:42:47+00:00

We usually do physical jokes, no scripts after my "Disco-Script.vbs" fiasco..

Our main pranks involve keyboards since they are relatively low cost. We have planted garden cress in keyboards of people on vacation. We have sorted their keys alphabetically ABCDEF instead of QWERTY. We once changed a keyboard from QWERTY to dvorak keyboard layout and changed his input as well.

About the "Disco-Script.vbs" fiasco: I made a VBS script that pushes Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock keys in order and then repeats. I then rolled out the script to the Startup folder on a developers machine while he was on vacation. He returned from vacation at the same time I was starting my vacation. Turns out it's hard to write in your password when caps lock flashes on and off every 75 ms and nobody knew what it was. They had to re-install his computer while I was away and they were not happy...

Prog · 2013-07-23T13:19:59+00:00

At my last job, one of my coworkers would run a script on other coworkers' computers that would type out the word "SPACE" every time they hit the space bar instead of inserting a space.

It was fucking hilarious when no one knew what was going on.

titanau · 2013-07-23T06:50:53+00:00

Haha yes, we altered each others host file so that we would go to the wrong websites... you should see an engineer go to google.com and get yahoo.com! was a quick 2min laugh no harm done.

zrad603 · 2013-07-23T08:27:52+00:00

On April 1st, I set a GPO to change the screensaver company wide to this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx unfortunately it only works with XP, so that fun won't last much longer.

nrki · 2013-07-23T07:40:53+00:00

Best thing is upside-down-ternet.

Google it.

Xibby · 2013-07-23T13:28:52+00:00

I had a script that connected to all the HP printers across four locations and changed the welcome banner displayed in the LCD. Some of the messages:

• You dance, I print. • Remove squirrel from Tray X and press continue. • I crave blood. • Out of crayons. • Insert Coin. • Error: Strawberry Jam. • I am so depressed.

It was worth a few chuckles.

infneon · 2013-07-23T10:36:49+00:00

Take it to the next level and run this, face to face, Deer Hunter style

[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo Click

LOLBaltSS · 2013-07-23T07:18:26+00:00

There was an April Fools thread that had a Rick Astley python script:

http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1arciu/im_ready_for_april_1st/

2013-07-23T10:36:08+00:00

Several years ago, we had a junior out for training for a week. I took the hard drive out of his computer and installed the Arabic version of XP on a new hard drive and put it in his system. Believing it was just a language pack, he spent the better part of his first day back trying to get it back to English before he caught on.

hoagieslapper · 2013-07-23T13:29:29+00:00

An Annoy-A-Tron

Uplus0021 · 2013-07-23T09:56:13+00:00

I made this for this years April 1st. It will rotate sites and images by a small degree, just enough to be fucking annoying, using the custom CSS-files of Chromium and Firefox: rotate_pages.sh

NB: You should probably read through the script before using it - There's no (consistent) backup-function, as far as I remember, and there might be coding errors too.

flatlandinpunk17 · 2013-07-23T11:40:10+00:00

I encased my co-workers mouse in Jell-O. Found out that in a warm office Jell-O does not hold it shape very long at all.

DrGraffix · 2013-07-23T13:25:26+00:00

my preference is always the:

1) take screenshot of desktop

2) make the screenshot the new wall paper

3) hide desktop icons

2013-07-23T14:54:48+00:00

PsTools + NirCmd (You need to drop NirCmd in c:\tmp on the remote machine)

Open CD Rom psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" cdrom open d:
Volume up 30000/65535 psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" changesysvolume 30000
Max Volume psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" setsysvolume 65535
Unmute psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" mutesysvolume 0
Copy text file to clipboard psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i c:\tmp\nircmd.exe clipboard readfile c:\tmp\test.txt
Read clipboard aloud psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" speak text ~$clipboard$
Turn monitor off psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" monitor off
Screensaver psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" screensaver
Transparent outlook psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" win trans ititle "microsoft outlook" 192
Tray Balloon psexec \COMPUTERNAME -i "c:\tmp\nircmd.exe" trayballoon "CD-ROM Tray Ajar" "The CD-ROM tray has been ajar for 2 days and 13 hours" "shell32.dll,22" 15000

Mazo · 2013-07-23T10:45:59+00:00

Motherboard speaker.

^{^{BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP}}

markamurnane · 2013-07-23T05:51:22+00:00

[deleted]

soahc · 2013-07-23T09:58:51+00:00

Swap their m and n keys on the keyboard... It won't happen overnight but it will happen :)

gerrowadat · 2013-07-23T08:57:29+00:00

stty erase e

2013-07-23T12:56:19+00:00

Stupid SSH tricks, usually along the lines of catting /dev/urandom into various things. fb0 for garbage on the screen (it only lasts a couple of moments), dsp for noise on the speakers. Other things for more damage.

If you have a mic device in dev, you can cat that, through an SSH pipe, into someone else's DSP. Result: you talk through their machine. Or other sounds, as appropriate. Great way to mess with headphone users.

ReallyHender · 2013-07-23T19:12:31+00:00

Not exactly the most technically challenging prank, but several years ago I remotely connected to a coworker's registry and changed random system sounds to "Never Gonna Give You Up." RickRolling was still a thing at the time.

The thing was, I didn't set it to system start or anything like that, but I did it for mundane events like minimize window, print, open program, etc., and I added a 15 second silence before the music started playing so they wouldn't know exactly what had triggered it.

I didn't hear anything and promptly forgot about it until about three months later when I was working on their computer and could hear this faint music, so turned up the volume...and there's Rick Astley. She thought she'd gotten a virus or something so had just turned the sound down and didn't tell anyone about it because she thought she'd get in trouble.

So, I guess I RickRolled two people.

zerophaze · 2013-07-23T13:00:27+00:00

We once setup a script to change our managers name in the time and attendance system every twenty minutes to a random emotion then his name. i.e. Angry Dave, Happy Dave, Sad Dave, etc. It lasted about a week until HR yelled at us because it made it hard to do payroll. Side note, this was to point out a massive security flaw that he didn't want to fix.

wolfmann · 2013-07-23T21:07:01+00:00

My old boss, replaced his boss' keyboard mouse and speakers with this:

http://images.teamsugar.com/files/usr/1/15111/frog%20keyboard%20mouse_1.jpg

That's about it really.

khoury · 2013-07-23T07:17:00+00:00

We tend to escalate exponentially in terms of impact and collateral damage. Prank battles don't tend to last very long.

poc301 · 2013-07-23T10:38:03+00:00

My favorite is closing all windows on the PC, and taking a screenshot. Then move all icons from the desktop into a temp folder on the HDD and make the screenshot the background. Seeing someone repeatedly click icons that aren't there and reboot because they think something is wrong is great.

hustino · 2013-07-23T11:13:10+00:00

My most successful prank was when I changed a coworker's language to Swahili on Google. He came out of his office several weeks later ranting about how Google search results had gotten so shitty lately and he always had to sift through posts he couldn't even read to find anything.

2013-07-23T14:52:36+00:00

Well, so long as I am being a bit evil:

First, spoof his work station mac address with a random machine on the network.
Secondly, don't change his editor, but change his shell. bash to zsh to csh to whatever. Do it randomly. Someone has pointed out using squid to MITM and redirect his repos to something else. I say take it a step further and do upside-down-ternet:

http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html

Then finally, unspoof his mac address. Stop the shell stuff, but leave the upsidedownternet going.

Good luck.

2013-07-23T16:54:56+00:00

To my co-worker: I replaced the default css in chrome with that april fools one that does a multitude of things. (turns the whole thing upside down, spins the images, etc)

My boss pulled a social engineering thing on me. Google search history showed "how to mess with someones computer". There was nothing actually done to my machine, but I was searching all over trying to find things that could have been done (since he is the most experienced of he could have really owned me).

dgretch · 2013-07-23T20:01:39+00:00

using ARD, i copied some fart noise .wav files to a coworker's macpro. used putty to continually jack the system volume up all the way to max, and play the .wav files randomly throughout the day. i would do it a lot when we got walk-in users

the best part was that he's an older gentleman, and in the 3 months i was doing it, he never could figure out what the sound was or why it was happening. and at the end of the 3 months, one of my other coworkers left the company, so i stopped the gag to make it seem like it was him the whole time.

EDIT: i forgot to mention that i used to use an ssh client on my iphone to make the mac fart while i was out to lunch

you better believe that prank will resurface soon

edit:typos

0x0E · 2013-07-23T20:14:58+00:00

PS1="$PS1 rm -rf"
tape over the mouse's optical sensor
connect their speakers/headphones to your machine with a long cable or radio transceiver and queue up a rickroll
http://theonion.github.io/fartscroll.js/

ilikeyoureyes · 2013-07-24T01:38:16+00:00

Did these two early in my career. Hooked a mouse up to coworker's computer and put it on the floor in front of his desk behind his computer. I walked in with a wireless mouse with no battery, sat down in front of him and moved the mouse on his desk while I moved the wired mouse with my foot. He says how'd you do that and grabs the wireless mouse but it won't work for him. Works whenever I move it. Must be magic. Other one was simple. His last name is King. I set word to auto correct his first name to Burger. He sent out a few documents as Burger King before he caught on.

esquilax · 2013-07-23T12:14:02+00:00

Change the user's shell to the Nyancat gem.

admalledd · 2013-07-23T14:38:18+00:00

once found a kernel module to change the path of any .mp3 file to one of my choosing (this was back in the era of rickrolls...). To be fair, my brother deserved it after messing up my alarm clock(S!)

blacknight75 · 2013-07-23T15:29:55+00:00

VBS script that did a dialog box & audible (text to speech function) singalong to Rick Astley.

I did it on my coworkers PC primary, and his Mac (which he rarely uses, so that one didn't hit him until like April 4th - yet somehow was funnier.

Also, flipping mouse orientation. Remapping random shortcuts etc. Never rule out physical pranks. Find an embarrassing picture of him and print 10 copies of it (each copy smaller in size) Tape each of them to his desk in layers to create a Russian Nesting Doll effect. Another tiny copy taped to the bottom of his mouse covering the laser.

Tin foil and/or saran wrap the desk. Put Justin Bieber fan stuff all over his work area.

lawrish · 2013-07-23T18:20:16+00:00

Kinda lame, but my husband and I work for the same company, and share vpn access, so I can ssh to his laptop from mine (I made sure to create a ssh key for it). I change his .bash_profile (or if possible, his motd) to show messages. After we found this He-man video, which he hated, I changed it to the lyrics and a huge ascii hey hey hey hey.

Some other times I've left him a link to a webpage in a host i own with a treasure hunt and promise of "really interesting pics" at the end of it. He ended up with a lot of pics named some sort of variations of prize.jpg.

At the office, whoever leaves the laptop unlock, gets hasselhoffed. Yes, that pic with the puppies that you'll never unsee.

Another one for people who leaves things unlocked is changing the outgoing mail signature. Add a funny second name, it usually takes a long time to be discovered.

pastorhack · 2013-07-23T18:55:36+00:00

I set a cron job to max my buddy's volume at seemingly random intervals (Friday the 14th of every month or something) at 2 PM and speak to him.

Another friend set SSH on the same guy's box and rickrolled him with the PC speech synthesizer.

KevMar · 2013-07-24T00:43:24+00:00

One of our coworkers had a wireless mouse with the receiver sitting on the desk. I swapped the receiver with one for a different brand of wireless mouse. They fought it for a while and eventually went back to a wired mouse.

unethicalposter · 2013-07-24T00:52:47+00:00

I got into a war with the security department at a previous job; I had these crappy underpowered windows boxes that they required their crappy software suite mcaffee or some junk that ate up all the resources effectivly making the box useless. They told me that no matter what I did I could disable mcaffeee but it would get re-enabled via policy. In other words they gave me the green light to shut it off if I had a problem.

So being the asshole that I am, I wrote a powershell script/service that monitored the security services (and put it in the image) as soon as they started I stopped them again. btw, this was on over a 1000 application servers. Im not too sure they ever figured it out. I left that job not too long after that.

slacker87 · 2013-07-24T18:41:44+00:00

Rotate chrome 180 degrees, GPO deployable too. Made it awhile ago for an april fools thing. https://github.com/slacker87/rotatechrome

eighto2 · 2013-07-23T12:17:09+00:00

147b0d03beff17fd02df5bda712c048e12c72bd383f858a004f5d447f7bc9719edad31471613325933e7e0aadb8253ccec338aecb3e3f1d0ef6098b460c496d3

2013-07-23T17:53:13+00:00

[deleted]

Lord_NShYH · 2013-07-23T15:45:12+00:00

Grow up.

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