About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to the Hoaxipedia (the museum's online encyclopedia of hoaxes), the Hoax Forum, and the Top 100 April Fools' Day Hoaxes.

The museum was created in 1997 by Alex Boese. He's assisted by a staff of deputy curators and docents. Alex is the author of three books, most recently Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments (which has nothing to do with hoaxes). Check out the list of the Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time for a preview.

Web Hoax Museum

Old joke.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010523

I'm not super-geeky as geeks go. But even I recognized that address when I saw it. I find it hard to believe that anybody with the brains to hack somebody else's system wouldn't. Besides the obvious question of, why did he ask for the mod's IP address, and did he actually expect they'd give it to him?

A 'hacker' hacking Localhost (127.0.0.1) ?! Yeah right.

...If he were screwing up his own computer, how could he still be operating it? This is a hoax.

I remember I used to go into Star Wars chat rooms on AOL & tell them that if they hit Alt S+S, they could see a new trailer clip (this was about the same time the Episode 1 was coming out).

Sounds fake to me, unless somebody can find a program out there that takes an IP address as input and reports percentages gone as the hard drives are erased.

hehee. looks like this could touch off another internet meme like "all your base are belong to us". there's already a cafepress line
(http://www.cafepress.com/hackyou)
where you can get 'shut up i hack you' and 'my grandma surfs with fire wall' mugs and boxer shorts.

He must be a great hacker. He managed to erase his own CD-ROM

Well, maybe he had a CD-RW.

And this is a fun shirt:


And I've seen "127.0.0.1 sweet 127.0.0.1" (But I want one that says "127.0.0.1 C12H22O11 127.0.0.1")

I need to learn how to do that!!!

Well, I read through the whole thing. If it's a true story, that sure is some brainless hacker. Looks like he doesn't even know what a "ping timeout" is (I'm a moderator for a IRC chat room - we see that often, especially since our room is hosted on a very sad network that netsplits at least twice a day).

>>>I find it hard to believe that anybody with the brains to hack somebody else's system wouldn't. <<<

Exactly. Also, no hacker worthy of being called a hacker would be powerless to affect you unless you politely provided him with your IP address. You don't really find it that hard to believe that some assclown on the Internet would be that stupid, do you? Just because you found a hack tool somewhere doesn't mean you aren't a dumbass.

"I'm a master thief! I can break into anywhere! If you don't believe me then just give me your keys and see what happens, ass!"

The thing I find unbelievable is that, if you read the whole story, it took the guy like three tries to erase his own harddrive. Why? Was he losing the net connection to his own computer?

-> it took the guy like three tries to erase his own harddrive <-

From how I read it, he was trying different hack tools, starting with a simple crash (hence the ping timeouts), and moving up to a deletion virus. It still sounds like BS to me though.

When people ask newb-questions on IRC and such, it's fun to tell them, "just push Alt-F4" and watch them spontaneously log out

funny thing! you can't just erase your hardisk at the same time working on it.

Of course, if he had multiple hard drives, he can quite happily erase them - but when he reaches the drive with his OS on it, he will encounter problems - either denied access (since his OS is still using those processes) or his system will crash.

k for one ya no doubt there is no idoit on the face of this planet that dont know if he's hacking him self i call bull shit on this story it's bunk junk i my self have been on the computer since i was 9 years of age am i a hacker? i wouldnt know if i did i wouldnt tell ya ive found all kinda hacks and ip sniffers out there im sure if i keep looking il find a hack that deletes hard drives and shows me precentages lol.. alright had enough fun im gonna hack this site now bye bye hahahahahahahahaha gime a break






1337 xxNŒxx Was Here peace Noobz

Alright, you're all pretty short-minded from what I can tell... I'm not saying this is real or a hoax, but none of you seem to be smart enough to have payed much attention to what was posted...

First off, he claimed E, then D drives were disappearing... Well, neither drive is required for (normal/standard/99% of installation's) to operate.

Second... Yes, you'd be surprised at the amount of noobs that will blindly ask for your IP. I've seen countless noobs do this in games, so... Just because it's a newb thing to do... doesn't mean it's impossible and definately isn't grounds to call this a hoax... Remember, the whole post was making fun of a "newb" for what he did.

It's fake because he said D drive is 45% gone? Have any of you used format.com once in your life? It displays a percentage until completion, and if you corrolate this with the drives disappearing.... I'm assuming he was using good ol fashioned format.com... and since... D and E aren't system drives in 99% of Windows installs, windows won't refuse your request...

Anyways, it was very painful to read all of your responses that "proved" it was a hoax. It still may be a hoax, but come on people use your brains!

I am not a geek but i know 127.0.0.1 is a home ip..and how can he/she say that drive E and D are deleted or in the process of deleting unless he has a cd/dvd in them because windows will not delete drives E and D anyway. It may format them or erase the cd or dvd but it won't delete the drives..even formatting your C drive if its in use is almost impossible so if the hacker is a noob how would he know how to delete the C,D or E drives even with a hack tool???
how many noobs can find let alone use a hack tool?

right i'm off to hack your granny lmao

C'mon, D and E drives don't HAVE to be CD/DVD room, you can put whatever letter you like on a harddrive, exept from mabye A, B and C, I'm not sure though..
but i find that story hard to belive anyways, but that's my opinion and i'm not saying it isn't true, i've crashed into alot of "noobs" in my life, which haven't been too long, yet...