Stuck deciding what to do with a hacker's weirdly helpful script

I was cleaning up a family friend's old desktop that kept crashing. Found a hidden script that was using their extra internet bandwidth to host free public Wi-Fi in their neighborhood. Had to figure out if I should delete it since it was unauthorized, or keep it running because it was actually helping people. Ended up leaving it after talking to them, but man, that was a strange day.

3 comments

3 Comments

abby_barnes2d ago

Found something similar last year when cleaning out my aunt's old laptop. It had a script running that turned her machine into a local file server for her church group, sharing newsletters and photos. Felt weird to see an unknown program doing that, but it was actually pretty harmless and useful. I ended up leaving it alone after she said the guy who set it up had moved away years ago.

mark5942d ago

Wow, stumbling onto stuff like that must feel so strange. @abby_barnes's church server story really shows how common these odd finds are. It's tough when something unauthorized is actually doing good for folks. Talking it over with the owner was definitely the right call.

nina_ramirez2d ago

Yeah I always check the logs first to see what it's actually doing... found a backup script once that looked weird but was just moving files to an old external drive. If it's not hurting anything and people use it, sometimes the best fix is just making sure there's a backup plan in case the machine dies.