“Now, this is a story all about how
My life got flipped-turned upside down
And I liked to take a minute
Just sit right there
I’ll tell you how I became the jerk that I am” ~The Not so Correct Intro of Fresh Price of Bell Air
There was a Time in my Life when I was a Young Teen (~18 Years ago aprox) and When I was addicted to Librarys. Around This Time, I started to Love Computers. What exactly happend during this Combination of Time you might ask?
Well, around this time, I explored the Computers of the Library. These Computers where (for the time around the 2000s) good protected with a Software called “Sitekiosk”.
This Software Basicly is Some Sort of “Overlay” to hide the Windows 7 Working under it. There was no “Real Way” To Bypass it. The USB Ports where Protected, there was no way to use .exe or .bat files, not a single way to have some fun (or at least I thought for the longest time).
One Day in the Earlie 2010’s I used the Computers in the Library for printing Stuff, when I needed to Open some Documents. The Sitekiosk always had the latest Office Versions installed. So I started to edit and Print Documents and quickly realised, that I needed to include some Pictures in the Documents.
So I searched for the Function in Microsoft word and Bingo, found it. I clicked on the “Open Image” Field and Saw something Famliar… The Opening Dialog didn’t looked like The Sitekiosk AT ALL. So I decided to give it a shot. I got home and quickly took an usb stick with all sorts of Portable Stuff I could got, First of all with Mozilla Firefox Portable. When you hack Stuff, you dont want traces, do you? So installing Programms would be a rather Bad Idea.
So I got back to the Library and Opend my Document in Microsoft word. i wanted to inlcude the Pictures again, landet on the Windows “open Stuff” dialog Annnnnnd….?
I could only Open Pictures… Sad… Disapointed, but every Story needs a Hero huh? What If we could actually trick windows into doing Stuff? Did Someone ever considered the Chance of Actually trick Windows to Open the Crap I wanted?
My Stick was already in there, but I couldn’t see Stuff on it, because => Portable Firefox is no Image ;)
So, I tested something. In Case You didn’t know, if you go to search in Windows for the “.*” symbols, you get EVERY File visible even if you can “official” only see the types requested… i wonder if this might be helpfull?
Like Hell it was. When I typed .* into the File Dialog, I saw EVERY File of my USB Stick, but be slow young padawan, you dont want to rush stuff do you? Why not trying to run Firefox First? I Mean for that we have it… Do you think an Admin was lazy enough to NOT test his envoirment for little Kids that might find this little funny Bug?
Yep he was. I couldn’t acutally run Firefox, because Doublick would have meant to include it in Microsoft Word, but Nobody told you that if you drag and drop firefox in other Apps (on my Stick was a copy of cmd.exe just to be sure) it would STILL open.
Now.. what do you think happend? Well… Quickly after the Successfull start of Firefox, I started to open the Task Manager on the same way. i was a shield on this time so I wasnt really good in “hiding the traces” but it was a fun ride anyway.
But the way, this trick still seems to work with most other “overlay” software like Sitekios :) Just try it, you would be Suprised haha
~Sn0wF0x
