Chronicles of a Techoholic A blog chronicling the life of a student and aspiring programmer

3 Geeky Pranks To Scare Your Friends

The following is a post that was rejected by MakeUseOf, while I was working there. Here it is, published with minimal changes. I unfortunately did not pass my probation period. The remaining posts will be posted here.

No, it's not April, but who says pranks should be restricted to one day of the year? If anything, doing pranks on other days is much better, since noone will expect anything. If you do any of these pranks on 1 April, it may give it away. But do it a bit later, when everyone else has forgotten and you have a great advantage. You can scare people out of their wits, if you do this properly. But we can't just accept any old pranks. As geeks, we do this properly. Some of the stuff you can do as a geek can make you look like a magician. So why not use your skills as an advantage? Here are a couple of pranks you can play from easiest to hardest. The final one can be really scary for a non-geeky person.

Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+8

This requires physical access to the Mac in question. But it only takes 1 second, literally. Just press the four keys together: Control, Option, Command and 8. This will basically invert everything on the screen. It's an accessibility feature, but it can be used to scare someone into thinking something is wrong with their monitor or graphics card. If they ask you for help, try your best not to laugh and pin down the problem with the part they think is harder and more expensive to replace. Just don't go too far. If they decide to purchase something to fix the problem, just quickly fix the problem for them. But don't give yourself away, remember, you need their trust to play more tricks on them.

Hide Files

This one will work for Linux too, and other UNIX systems. Remember the Terminal commands I taught you yesterday? Well, I said they would be fun. Here's one way you can use the mv command. You'll need a little more time for this. While your target's gone, just open up the Terminal, type in: mv /directory/importantdocument.doc /directory/.importantdocument.doc A dot as the first character will hide the file. Make sure there's no hidden files already with the same name. Unlikely with a non-geeky user, but you can never be sure. The mv command will replace a file if it has the same name and it will overwrite it with the file you are moving, or renaming in this case. To look at the contents of a directory, just use the ls command I taught you yesterday too.

SSH say

This is another one which will use the Terminal, the same commands I taught you yesterday. Even though I titled that post "5 Fun & Useful Terminal Commands You Can Use More Than Once", I only identified one of the commands as fun and that was the say command. Now you can see how learning the Terminal can lead to lots of fun? I've already shown you how you can use the mv command for a bit of fun, now for the SSH and say commands. This one is the hardest, since you're going to need not just geek skills, but also social skills too. I did warn you! You could do this evilly without worrying about social skills, but that doesn't mean it's gonna be a piece of cake. For this, we need the target's password. You could use social engineering techniques, or you could just hack his/her password. Looking over their shoulders is an easy method. Once you've got that, it's time to turn on SSH on their computers. Refer to my previous post to find out how to do this. Make sure you have their permission and that they understand the security risks involved with giving people their WEP/WPA/WPA2 and user password, while their computer is in this state. Even just giving the user password is dangerous if an evil entity has their external IP address. If anyone hacks into their computers, this is not my responsibility. As long as you or they don't give their user passwords to anyone, they should be fine. This is why you must be evil if you want to do this without any social skills. Alternatively, you can own two computers, set up remote login on one of them and let your target use that one. Okay, finally we can perform the prank. Just use the SSH command I taught you about to remotely login to their computers on your console. ssh user@host Now, make sure you either have a video feed of them on your screen, or you can hear them clearly from where you are. You are going to have to make sense if you want them to get scared. Now just use the say command to speak to them. say SAY ANYTHING YOU WANT You could say things like, "Malfunction! Malfunction!" or you could make the computer come alive. See if you can start an intelligent conversation with them. Handy Tip: use capital letters and question marks to change the computer's tone. I tested this and it works!
Handy Tip 2: SSH can control the other computer remotely. say isn't the only command you can do. Get creative! SSH is a fertile ground for pranks.

Conclusion

Like I said, don't get carried away. If they decide to buy a new computer to fix their 'problems' that were, in fact, caused by you, then make sure to either 'magically fix it' and assure them it won't happen again, or be prepared to give yourself away. You don't want the guilt of making your friend spend unnecessary money because of you, do you? Did any of the pranks here help you scare your friends? Or your enemies? Did their computer manage to 'convince' them to finally give you the money they owe you? We'll be glad to hear any funny stories below! Check out these posts for more ideas:

• 7 Hilarious Practical Joke Ideas To Play On Your Friend‚Äôs Computer [Windows]
• 5 Websites To Get Hilarious Practical Joke Ideas
• 4 Free April Fools' Prank Ideas Your Friends Will Love