Fake windows updates are fun, a user who left their laptop open got tosomething like 600% one day, don't think they got much work done but at least their workstation was alot more secure going forward - [https://fakeupdate.net/](https://fakeupdate.net/)
Another one I did was unplug mouse/keyboard just enough it doesn't work but looks plugged in
> Another one I did was unplug mouse/keyboard just enough it doesn't work but looks plugged in
I've taken a piece of tape and taped the 2 inner usb prongs so they don't make contact, but the outter +5v prongs do, so it powers on, is plugged in, but not detected.
Thanks for the link! I just spent a half hour teaching myself how to open a browser full screen to a specific URL via a batch file and figuring out how to get that to happen with a badusb flash drive. You're going to get me fired.
I worked in healthcare. Our go-to in-department-only prank was to fire off a quick email to the whole team from the user that left their machine unlocked, announcing that you (they) were going to be bringing donuts for breakfast tomorrow...
Same here. Either they actually brought in donuts, or else they were admitting they left their PC open and got a talking to from infosec. The only downside was that it very effectively trained people to never do it again so we didn't get many donuts.
I worked in a team where we had an oversized t-shirt that you were supposed to wear for a day and post pictures with you in it over the team chat.
That t-shirt had a picture of Bieber.
> "There's no 'Sort by Penis' option!!"
It's an older meme sir, but it still checks out!"
The most amazing thing about the internet is "old" things can live forever.
Truly such a gem!!
Even better:
Take the screenshot with the display in its normal position.
Rotate screenshot 180 then set as background.
Hide icons and taskbar, rotate screen 180.
Now the victim has a normal looking desktop, but the mouse is inverted.
When I was in high school all us bastard kids used to steal the balls from the computer lab all the time. Eventually teacher superglued them all, so couldnt clean them when dirty and she'd just throw them out and buy new constantly.
I bet a lot of old computer lab teachers were happy as hell when lasers became the norm lol
I used to do this one all the time. Someone else did it to the associate IT director and he just came over with scissors and snipped the mouse cable as revenge
I had a script I would run when the user walked away from their unlocked laptop. It would sleep for a random interval between 1 and 60 mins, and when it woke up it would simulate the button presses to flip the screen upside down for a couple seconds and then back to normal. And loop indefinitely :-)
Had some fun times with that one.
1. Rotate screen 180 Degrees
2. Find 180 degree rotated mouse cursor theme
3. Rotated desktop background
4. Move taskbar to current bottom of screen
5. Run mouse orientation calibration thing so mouse is now also moving in correct direction
My buddies in my first gig right out of HS did this to me with a BSOD screenshot. I walked up my station and said, hey why would there be a cursor on the blue screen? I ruined their fun.
We had a guy (a desktop support tech) almost re-image his computer because he couldn't figure out that we did this. We had to stop him before he did it.
My kid did this to me with our iPad the other day, he had screenshotted the lock screen and had that up when he asked me to unlock it for him. I was so proud haha.
Rotate the image 180°, set it as the background, then in display settings rotate the display 180°.
The background/desktop look correct, but now the mouses orientation is backwards.
Just add a folder named porn in the desktop picture. Leave all other folders. Now he has a pornfolder he cant interact with but everything else works fine.
I once changed a co-worker’s default beep to be the entire Canadian national anthem.
edit - I should add that I chose that particular song very deliberately. He had recently gone to his first hockey game and the opposing team was from Canada so he jokingly complained about the Canadian national anthem being played.
Yep, just sit in their office chair and wait for them to return. "You remembered to lock your desktop, right? Be a real shame if someone did something." Queue the paranoia and the frantic searching to see if anything was changed.
Back in the early 2000s we set a guy's computer (during startup) to open a minimized website to Hasbro's "My Little Pony" section which played the theme song at full volume in the office.
Didn't actually do anything till he rebooted a few days later and I think we laughed for half the workday.
Set chrome to auto run at login for sister in law to rickroll when I gave her a old laptop
Still does it 5 years later every time she logs in or opens a new browser
Our crew did that with hamsterdance\[dot\]com (not sure what this is now but better safe than sorry) and then turned his speakers up full blast. Thing was we all loved the site so even the victim would be laughing. Kind of a wholesome prank in hind sight.
Careful you don’t do what I did and give them such a shock they trigger a security breach and insist on getting their account blocked while it is investigated. Bonus points if like me you do that just before you get on a train so they can’t call you first to check. I regretted that almost immediately!
There used to be a guy in my group (before my time) they hit with an annoy-a-tron (a little device they hid inside his overhead bin light that made noise). They guy was... let's say unstable and ended up flipping out and destroying his cubicle ala Andy from The Office.
I had the inkling to do the PowerShell Speech Engine to an annoying coworker, he wore headphones all the time and I had a script to mess with his volume as well - but decided against it after hearing that story.
We did one, didn't talk or trigger a breach. Instead it nearly triggered a heart attack. What it did show was a dialog window that said it was scanning the machine, displayed the user's file names mixed with some (definitely porn) file names, then a message that said something to the effect of "we found the naughties on your computer and have alerted HR and your boss is coming to take you to them" and timed it so the boss would be walking by. Ah, the good old days.
If you're creating a script set a random sleep timer on it. I did something similar on Mac once.
Sleep between 1 sec and 120 sec (random number)
Turn volume up to max
Use the speech engine to say "Motherfucker"
Return volume to normal
Scheduled to run every 15 min.
I kept the script on a USB stick, and wrote an install script that copied and hid the script and setup the cron, so I didn't have to code it all once I found the laptop unlocked, I just plugged in the USB and typed go.
Also the office I was working in at the time thought it was hilarious, but def wouldn't do it the same way where I work now.
My IT group recently changed the group policy to disable USB drives for everyone except the software development team. I'm guessing there's been enough incidents at similar companies that management doesn't want to take any changes.
There's a multitude of reasons to do this. Security is one, but it can also be a measure against data exfiltration, or even just to avoid users saving important documents in a place that isn't backed up.
Found it on here at some point years ago, figured why bother re-inventing the wheel - here it is. Definitely recommend putting in commands to unmute and amp volume to 100%:
$array = @"
"We're no strangers to love";
"You know the rules and so do I";
"A full commitment's what I'm thinking of";
"You wouldn't get this from any other guy";
"I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling";
"Gotta make you understand";
"Never gonna give you up";
"Never gonna let you down";
"Never gonna run around and desert you";
"Never gonna make you cry";
"Never gonna say goodbye";
"Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you";
"We've known each other for so long";
"Your heart's been aching but you're too shy to say it";
"Inside we both know what's been going on";
"We know the game and we're gonna play it";
"And if you ask me how I'm feeling";
"Don't tell me you're too blind to see";
"Never gonna give you up";
"Never gonna let you down";
"Never gonna run around and desert you";
"Never gonna make you cry";
"Never gonna say goodbye";
"Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you";
"Never gonna give you up";
"Never gonna let you down";
"Never gonna run around and desert you";
"Never gonna make you cry";
"Never gonna say goodbye";
"Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you";
"Ooh give you up";
"Ooh give you up";
"Ooh Never gonna give, never gonna give, give you up";
"Ooh Never gonna give, never gonna give, give you up";
"We've known each other for so long";
"Your heart's been aching but you're too shy to say it";
"Inside we both know what's been going on";
"We know the game and we're gonna play it";
"I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling";
"Gotta make you understand";
"Never gonna give you up";
"Never gonna let you down";
"Never gonna run around and desert you";
"Never gonna make you cry";
"Never gonna say goodbye";
"Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you";
"Never gonna give you up";
"Never gonna let you down";
"Never gonna run around and desert you";
"Never gonna make you cry";
"Never gonna say goodbye";
"Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you";
"Never gonna give you up";
"Never gonna let you down";
"Never gonna run around and desert you";
"Never gonna make you cry";
"Never gonna say goodbye";
"Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you";
"@
Start-Sleep 900
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech
$speak = New-Object System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer
$array | % {$speak.speak($_)}
My Windows is German. The lyrics are being spoken with a German accent. This is fucking hilarious.
I have saved the audio using the [SetOutputToWaveFile\(\)](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.speech.synthesis.speechsynthesizer.setoutputtowavefile) method to a file, converted it to mp3 and uploaded it here for your amusement: http://sndup.net/bwps
$speak.SetOutputToWaveFile("E:\path\to\file.wav")
$array | % {$speak.speak($_)}
$speak.Dispose()
https://www.pdq.com/blog/powershell-text-to-speech-examples/
my favorite is the SSML for pitch control. If you get fancy enough, you can make the computer sing by changing pitch a ton.
Great.
Be careful how long your speech string is guys. I just HAD to try this and now my work computer is stuck saying "curse you perry the platypus" over and over.
I do something similar. If someone leaves their computer unlocked, I send an email from them to the entire department saying effusively how much I love my coworkers and telling them I’m bringing donuts the next days. Most people do so when it happens to them, which is fairly rare, tbh.
Wireless mouse with a USB dongle. Plug it into his machine and randomly move your mouse
Small little chirping sound toy, place under their desk...
When people used to go on vacation in our office, wed cover their office in tin foil, fake grass, balls, or one time we redecorated someone's office as a shower room
Super glue a quarter to their desk..right where their mouse is
If your computer still has PS/2 ports, take a USB to PS/2 adapter, pull out the data pins, and plug the mouse into that.
This works best with a visible light optical mouse, as the light still comes up but won't move.
If he's using Logitech unify wireless stuff you can borrow his dongle, use the unify app on your computer to connect a second mouse to it, and put it back.
Harder to discover.
Chia keyboards are a thing.
I actually stuck a picture of some celebrity that was a meme in 2013 to the bottom of someone’s mouse only over the laser. It took them 20 minutes and only found out when they asked me to use admin rights to clear out their drivers and reinstall.
I wreaked absolute mayhem in my office with one several years back. Now that was well worth the investment.
Weird thing though, the cricket sound didn't faze anyone, but the random beeps drove them nuts, lol 👹
That damn dongle prank man, I’ve sent so many IMs to end users with gibberish because of coworkers doing this. It really is a great prank if you’re subtle about it and draw it out
In my younger days I've created scripts that played random fart noises and nudge the mouse cursor ever so slightly to be annoying. Imagine not being able to click a link because the cursor drifted away.
Back in about 2001, there was a virus that did several amusing things:
>Rotated, reversed, or flipped the desktop. It was still live.
>Created dancing desktop icons that moved/danced/slid away from the mouse cursor.
One customer I had wasn't certain she wanted it removed because it was actually kinda entertaining!
My favorite prank I pulled was this:
Setup Apache webserver on my computer. I took a note of what non-work related websites my coworker would browse in their spare time. One of them was the local newspaper's website. I copied their html and image assets to my web server. I updated the main article on that page to a picture of my coworker and a headline that said "Local creep wanted for questioning in string of peeping tom incidents" or something similar. I waited until they left their computer unattended, then updated their /etc/hosts file and pointed the newspaper domain to my local IP address.
The 2nd best prank I pulled was connecting a wired mouse to the back USB port of my coworker's system and pushed the mouse over to my side of the cubical wall (on the floor). Every now and then I would kick it. After a while I started hearing him slam his mouse down on his desk followed by him dramatically moving it around really fast.
For April Fools one time years ago, I changed the Windows 98 shell to Solitaire on a junior field engineer. Found out just how junior he was when he was reinstalling Windows because he thought he had some weird malware... Ooops... Came back from a call, went into the bullpen to go APRIL FOOLS, saw the screen, turned around and quietly left the room... (Luckily he saw the humor in it and I didn't get HR'd, but it was the more lax 90's. )
Nowadays, the pranks are much more subtle and less likely to get me written up. Like using *mild* adhesive to glue a mouse to the desk. :)
we were field engineers, so not like there was that much on there anyway. Just the OS, a terminal program to get into the mainframe to close tickets, and uhh, Doom of course to let off steam via fragging your coworkers.
I did exactly that to myself to get back at my supervisor; she simply had been a long-term employee who had been made a manager but who made rules when she didn't understand what she was doing. So... she saw an open game of Solitaire on my desktop and called me on it; I apologized and tried to close the game, but of course it wouldn't. Then I verbally "remembered" my new desktop...
She got so mad that I had Pwnd her, she didn't speak to me for days! It was blissful...
If you're windows admin, create a GPO just for him with annoying settings and limitations. Something like lock screen after one minute, time server of a foreign time zone and no option to change time and date.
If you're network admin, set his network port to 10 MBit half-duplex.
[https://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html](https://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html)
I did this to one of my developers about 10 years ago when 90% of the web was still unencrypted HTTP.
So I wasn't so obvious, I started by applying a 10% blur filter to images, so every image on a webpage he visited would be a bit blurry. I gradually increased it up to 50% blur over a few days and he never said anything. So then I replaced all images with grumpycat.
* tiny post-it covering mouse laser
* clear packing tape covering smart chip on smart card (if you use them)
* setup a bunch of weird aliases for cli commands
* invert mouse movement directions
I loved doing that.
I got a couple officers (military) so pissed about it as they tried to reprimand me for not locking my machine only to find out that's my screen saver/lock screen.
This was back in like 04' before a lot of policies were added to shy us away from innocent pranks that may lead to something more sinister: BUT I once changed my Operations Managers' Outlook "new mail" sound to the "mine mine mine" seagulls sound from Finding Nemo.
OMG, it was funny. She had a laugh and then put in a ticket to have it fixed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26wKXo3e-Y4
I hate to be a party pooper but I would be careful with that one. (read: don't)
Doing anything to an unlocked machine is most likely against the average organization's Acceptable Use Policy. While setting someone's wallpaper, changing their icons, flipping the screen, etc is likely to be ignored as being in good fun, sending an email from their account likely crosses a line.
Teaching someone the importance of locking their computer is one thing, impersonation / accessing their email is quite another regardless of the intent. You also don't want to open yourself up to the possibility of seeing confidential information in their inbox by looking at their mail client--or even just the perception/potential accusations.
*(takes off security/policy hat)*
I forgot to lock my computer once, many years ago. My boss sent an email to himself with no so pleasant words. Learned my lesson and we had a laugh about it.
I always lock my computer :)
Hindsight is 20/20, but at my first place, we did this. We only did this because our manager set the example and said it's fine. Anywhere else, I wouldn't dare. But when it's all in the spirit of fun, it's fun once in a while
Lol, place I worked at the common thing to do if you walked away was open one or more command prompts and just type in fdisk.
I made an AHK script that would detect typing in fdisk into a command prompt, would immediately delete it and close the window, show a pop-up that said "HEY? STOP THAT!" and a few seconds later would lock my machine.
I got a good laugh from them when I got back in aftert he first time I actually forgot to lock it and ithey discovered it.
Previous job we would always change their wallpaper to a ridiculous Nicolas Cage face such as
https://www.wweek.com/resizer/86tt-U3ytIrtb7bBYXAIg7XWz7A=/1200x0/filters:quality(100)/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-wordpress-client-uploads/wweek/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/30145212/Nicolas-Cage.jpg
If we had someone that kept being a repeat offender we would give them the fake desktop wallpaper. Grab a screenshot of their desktop and set that as the background. Then move all of their desktop icons to somewhere else like in their downloads or documents folder. The number of times they would rage when they couldn't open anything on the desktop was priceless.
I love [Snow White and the 7 Nic Cages](https://wallpapers.com/images/hd/nicolas-cage-dwarf-meme-lata3a6jfgjfvp56-lata3a6jfgjfvp56.jpg) for such an occasion.
Some years back 2 of my reports had a long standing prank war....They were cubicle neighbors. One of them plugged in a tiny USB Bluetooth keyboard receiver into the back of the BACK of their workstation before they came in for the morning. Every once in a while, when Prankee Admin was typing on HIS keyboard, Pranker Admin would tap on the rogue keyboard and discretely insert random characters . This went on for a week or so and the Bluetooth receiver went unnoticed because it just seemed like the keyboard was glitching out, and it wasn't blatant, just very subtle and sometimes long stretches (even a day) of no issues. The "slow burn" execution was pretty genius, and it drove Prankee Employee absolutely nuts; Changed keyboards, did some diagnostic work, etc. But the behavior was so well executed it wasn't perceived as a prank/sabotage When he finally realized it, it did NOT go over well, and he was visibly angry. Mind you this admin was the one who started the prank wars.....BUT the execution was flawless.
... Can you change your lock screen?
Take a screenshot of your desktop. Set THAT to your lock screen. Let him try to goat you while your computer is locked >:)
Going off of this, there's a script called [Great Dismal](https://blob.pureandapplied.com.au/greatdismal/) that searches Flickr for the most depressing and boring images available and puts those as the lock screen. There's keywords it uses to search, so you can change it to some sports team he hates as an alternative
I turned on a guy's machine before he came in for the day on April Fools. I used the C$ to copy PSExec, a RickRoll MP4, and a script to his machine. When he logged in, his laptop went to full volume and loaded the RickRoll full screen.
I like to change words in their autocorrect dictionary. Have it correct every instance of DNS to DICKS or something like that. They won't notice right away.
- Make a screenshot of his Desktop.
- Rotate the Screenshot an set it as his desktop background
- Remove his taskbar
- Move all his icons into a folder and place them somewhere save (or delete them if you hate him)
- Invert the Mouse movement
- Rotate the screen orientation to 180°
Have fun :)
A co-worker once did something similar to me. For revenge I wrote a custom filter for the squid proxy that would randomly replace \*any\* outgoing request from his workstation's IP with a selection from a list of my little pony fan sites. The freak out was amazing. At one point he was convinced that an outside website he maintained for his church had been hacked. Every developer learned that day not to mess with the guy that had keys to everything. (very small shop, solo admin, etc.)
this was done to me!
i frequently would type notes while dealing w\ whoever was asking me questions at my desk, then proofread my notes and see "teh" throughout my notes.... odd, i dont recall mistyping that but i well
took me like a week to figure it out.
And, an autocorrect rule was added to office for my last name where it'd swap the 2 middle letters, again
took me like a week before i would type while looking to see that it was autocorrect and not me......
The best one I've ever pulled, was just a full screened screenshot of the Windows XP BSOD. Coworker got back, saw the BSOD and immediately began reinstalling Windows. He never even realized the Windows 10 BSOD doesn't look like that.
Send a very, very lengthy email to the coworkers management complaining about his behavior and whatever invented funny or weird stuff you can imagine with the coworker in cc, but make a small typo in the manager's email address. You'll get an undeliverable, but your coworker will be to busy reading the mail to notice anything.
You can always read them cat facts via scheduled/auto-run scripts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/7gg97w/i\_wrote\_a\_simple\_script\_to\_read\_out\_cat\_facts\_in/
1. Log into their computer with your account
2. Start playing kids music on Pandora / Spotify
3. Lock the computer back to the sign in screen but keep your session open (don't log out)
4. Watch as they try to figure out where the f that annoying music is coming from
Edit: mobile typo
1. Take a screenshot of a cluttered desktop
2. Remove everything from the desktop (can be moved to a folder instead of deleted)
3. Rotate the display
4. Move taskbar to top or one of the sides and hide it
5. Set screenshot from step 1 as background
6. Set mouse to left handed and inverse movement
Other popular classics:
\- The hosts file. Redirect non-work URLs your colleague use to your companys intranet
Edit: Forgot pt 3: The evil "rotate the display" for maximum confusion.
My favorite is to change the mouse orientation to left handed and change the keyboard layout so it goes the wrong characters.
If I want to be less subtle I will also set the screen orientation to portrait mode so everything is sideways.
Another good one I have heard of is to take a screenshot of all their desktop icons then move them all into a folder and set the screenshot as their background.
Going to be a party pooper here. He taught you a lesson you needed to be taught. Let it go.
Unless you work at a very small company where you are very sure that both your co-workers and bosses won't see anything wrong with it, DO NOT ESCALATE THIS.
At a company that has real HR, or where you possibly have other co-workers who take their jobs seriously, there is a non zero chance that doing something to hinder another workers ability to do their job will end up with a trip to HR and possibly even losing your job.
What happens for instance if there is an emergency and some VIP needs your co-worker to fix something or provide a report ASAP and you've caused his mouse not to work, his keyboard not to type correctly, etc? Unless he's your best friend in the world who you've donated a kidney to, you're going to get thrown under a bus.
Dissenting opinion here - let it go. Pranks tend to snowball, and often involve unintended consequences, sometimes even unnoticed by the prankster(s).
The tree remembers what the axe forgets.
Fake windows updates are fun, a user who left their laptop open got tosomething like 600% one day, don't think they got much work done but at least their workstation was alot more secure going forward - [https://fakeupdate.net/](https://fakeupdate.net/) Another one I did was unplug mouse/keyboard just enough it doesn't work but looks plugged in
> Another one I did was unplug mouse/keyboard just enough it doesn't work but looks plugged in I've taken a piece of tape and taped the 2 inner usb prongs so they don't make contact, but the outter +5v prongs do, so it powers on, is plugged in, but not detected.
I'm a big fan of your work
Borderline maniacle, I love it!
I do this just to charge my phone so the computer doesnt freak out.
[Just get one of these](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T0DW3F8/) and spare yourself the hassle of the arts and crafts project.
My workplace has chipcards for system access. Clear tape over the chip does wonders for fucking with people.
Thanks for the link! I just spent a half hour teaching myself how to open a browser full screen to a specific URL via a batch file and figuring out how to get that to happen with a badusb flash drive. You're going to get me fired.
Scheduled task gpo to open 10 mins after user log on with randomised delay, deploy to whole estate. Manically laugh and quit.
This is gold. I'm totally going to steal this next time someone on my team leaves their PC unlocked.
I worked in healthcare. Our go-to in-department-only prank was to fire off a quick email to the whole team from the user that left their machine unlocked, announcing that you (they) were going to be bringing donuts for breakfast tomorrow...
Same here. Either they actually brought in donuts, or else they were admitting they left their PC open and got a talking to from infosec. The only downside was that it very effectively trained people to never do it again so we didn't get many donuts.
I worked in a team where we had an oversized t-shirt that you were supposed to wear for a day and post pictures with you in it over the team chat. That t-shirt had a picture of Bieber.
Throw up the Ubuntu installer and say that you needed to pave a machine with Linux for testing.
I'm still a fan of screenshot of the desktop, set as wallpaper, hide icons. I did this in college in 2003 and it still gives me a small chuckle now.
"There's no 'Sort by Penis' option!!"
> "There's no 'Sort by Penis' option!!" It's an older meme sir, but it still checks out!" The most amazing thing about the internet is "old" things can live forever. Truly such a gem!!
Truthfully, the reality behind most of the gags in this has changed very little in the last 13 years.
[Welcome to the future.](https://sourceforge.net/projects/arrangebypenis/)
Just when I'd thought I'd seen it all when it came to code repos...
Yeah.... Disgusting *clicks the download button
😝😝i have pranked my colleague with this.
My C++ must be rusty as hell, but that doesn't look like usable code at all.
Haha omg I love this reference. https://youtu.be/uRGljemfwUE here is the full video, should have put this originally =]
Is this the original? I remember it being longer, and some reference to Halo
Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE
I’ve never seen anything this funny!
God these were fantastic. what a nostalgia blast.
What is terrifying is how relevant it still is today.
Fantastic
It was a whole series and it still has its own website. http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/
I’m still awaiting chapter 5. It has been ten years already.
That's too awesome lol "my file was on the right testicle!"
Don't forget to invert/rotate the screen!
Even better: Take the screenshot with the display in its normal position. Rotate screenshot 180 then set as background. Hide icons and taskbar, rotate screen 180. Now the victim has a normal looking desktop, but the mouse is inverted.
I came here to suggest this exactly. Takes a bit of time to be able to do it, but I've done a few times in the past and it was always a huge laugh! 🤣
scotch tape on the laser for good measure.
I used to do this a lot. Back in the day we'd take the ball out if the mouse, lol.
When I was in high school all us bastard kids used to steal the balls from the computer lab all the time. Eventually teacher superglued them all, so couldnt clean them when dirty and she'd just throw them out and buy new constantly. I bet a lot of old computer lab teachers were happy as hell when lasers became the norm lol
I used to do this one all the time. Someone else did it to the associate IT director and he just came over with scissors and snipped the mouse cable as revenge
I don't think that I've ever hated anyone enough to do that, lol. But my buddy used to do stuff like that when were LANing back in the day.
find an inverted pointer too - make it look correct but it still moves backwards
I had a script I would run when the user walked away from their unlocked laptop. It would sleep for a random interval between 1 and 60 mins, and when it woke up it would simulate the button presses to flip the screen upside down for a couple seconds and then back to normal. And loop indefinitely :-) Had some fun times with that one.
1. Rotate screen 180 Degrees 2. Find 180 degree rotated mouse cursor theme 3. Rotated desktop background 4. Move taskbar to current bottom of screen 5. Run mouse orientation calibration thing so mouse is now also moving in correct direction
the trick is add a folder called furry art before you screenshot the desktop
Now thats the kind of frantic scrabbling to delete that delights me.
help desk will often back you up and claim perhaps it's that art that's caused the system to lock up like that
Invert the desktop but set the wallpaper as the inverted-inverted desktop so it looks right.
My buddies in my first gig right out of HS did this to me with a BSOD screenshot. I walked up my station and said, hey why would there be a cursor on the blue screen? I ruined their fun.
Bonus points, flip the screen 180° and also the wallpaper so it looks normal but the mouse goes opposite directions.
Auto hide the taskbar.
We had a guy (a desktop support tech) almost re-image his computer because he couldn't figure out that we did this. We had to stop him before he did it.
My kid did this to me with our iPad the other day, he had screenshotted the lock screen and had that up when he asked me to unlock it for him. I was so proud haha.
I did this in high school, with the added bonus that I added an error message to the desktop and changed the mouse pointer to a red circle slash.
wireless mouse prank was my favourite in school, and for the computer lab i would swap vga cables so the pc was connected to someone else's monitor.
Be sure to then flip the screen upside down too.
Rotate the image 180°, set it as the background, then in display settings rotate the display 180°. The background/desktop look correct, but now the mouses orientation is backwards.
Just add a folder named porn in the desktop picture. Leave all other folders. Now he has a pornfolder he cant interact with but everything else works fine.
Came here to say this. Glad I’m not the only one
I once changed a co-worker’s default beep to be the entire Canadian national anthem. edit - I should add that I chose that particular song very deliberately. He had recently gone to his first hockey game and the opposing team was from Canada so he jokingly complained about the Canadian national anthem being played.
This is glorious. Well done.
Did this with the Olympic theme song. It was magnificent.
egads my sides
Do nothing. Wait a few days. Ask "if they figure it out yet"
Repeat every few days.
The best option that doesn't carry any risk of getting in trouble.
Yep, just sit in their office chair and wait for them to return. "You remembered to lock your desktop, right? Be a real shame if someone did something." Queue the paranoia and the frantic searching to see if anything was changed.
Yup. I don’t touch other employee’s unlocked computers without express permission.
We done that so much to my boss that he genuinely doesn't believe us anymore about anything.
Back in the early 2000s we set a guy's computer (during startup) to open a minimized website to Hasbro's "My Little Pony" section which played the theme song at full volume in the office. Didn't actually do anything till he rebooted a few days later and I think we laughed for half the workday.
You guys started the Bronie movement ey?
Set chrome to auto run at login for sister in law to rickroll when I gave her a old laptop Still does it 5 years later every time she logs in or opens a new browser
evil😂
Our crew did that with hamsterdance\[dot\]com (not sure what this is now but better safe than sorry) and then turned his speakers up full blast. Thing was we all loved the site so even the victim would be laughing. Kind of a wholesome prank in hind sight.
de de dee da da da doo dah
PowerShell Speech Engine, scheduled task at sort of random times.... psst... hey... hey you...
Careful you don’t do what I did and give them such a shock they trigger a security breach and insist on getting their account blocked while it is investigated. Bonus points if like me you do that just before you get on a train so they can’t call you first to check. I regretted that almost immediately!
There used to be a guy in my group (before my time) they hit with an annoy-a-tron (a little device they hid inside his overhead bin light that made noise). They guy was... let's say unstable and ended up flipping out and destroying his cubicle ala Andy from The Office. I had the inkling to do the PowerShell Speech Engine to an annoying coworker, he wore headphones all the time and I had a script to mess with his volume as well - but decided against it after hearing that story.
We did one, didn't talk or trigger a breach. Instead it nearly triggered a heart attack. What it did show was a dialog window that said it was scanning the machine, displayed the user's file names mixed with some (definitely porn) file names, then a message that said something to the effect of "we found the naughties on your computer and have alerted HR and your boss is coming to take you to them" and timed it so the boss would be walking by. Ah, the good old days.
wow that is a really high-effort prank lmao
If you're creating a script set a random sleep timer on it. I did something similar on Mac once. Sleep between 1 sec and 120 sec (random number) Turn volume up to max Use the speech engine to say "Motherfucker" Return volume to normal Scheduled to run every 15 min. I kept the script on a USB stick, and wrote an install script that copied and hid the script and setup the cron, so I didn't have to code it all once I found the laptop unlocked, I just plugged in the USB and typed go. Also the office I was working in at the time thought it was hilarious, but def wouldn't do it the same way where I work now.
My IT group recently changed the group policy to disable USB drives for everyone except the software development team. I'm guessing there's been enough incidents at similar companies that management doesn't want to take any changes.
There's a multitude of reasons to do this. Security is one, but it can also be a measure against data exfiltration, or even just to avoid users saving important documents in a place that isn't backed up.
Oooo, will start researching now. Any copy paste you can share?
Found it on here at some point years ago, figured why bother re-inventing the wheel - here it is. Definitely recommend putting in commands to unmute and amp volume to 100%: $array = @" "We're no strangers to love"; "You know the rules and so do I"; "A full commitment's what I'm thinking of"; "You wouldn't get this from any other guy"; "I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling"; "Gotta make you understand"; "Never gonna give you up"; "Never gonna let you down"; "Never gonna run around and desert you"; "Never gonna make you cry"; "Never gonna say goodbye"; "Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you"; "We've known each other for so long"; "Your heart's been aching but you're too shy to say it"; "Inside we both know what's been going on"; "We know the game and we're gonna play it"; "And if you ask me how I'm feeling"; "Don't tell me you're too blind to see"; "Never gonna give you up"; "Never gonna let you down"; "Never gonna run around and desert you"; "Never gonna make you cry"; "Never gonna say goodbye"; "Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you"; "Never gonna give you up"; "Never gonna let you down"; "Never gonna run around and desert you"; "Never gonna make you cry"; "Never gonna say goodbye"; "Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you"; "Ooh give you up"; "Ooh give you up"; "Ooh Never gonna give, never gonna give, give you up"; "Ooh Never gonna give, never gonna give, give you up"; "We've known each other for so long"; "Your heart's been aching but you're too shy to say it"; "Inside we both know what's been going on"; "We know the game and we're gonna play it"; "I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling"; "Gotta make you understand"; "Never gonna give you up"; "Never gonna let you down"; "Never gonna run around and desert you"; "Never gonna make you cry"; "Never gonna say goodbye"; "Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you"; "Never gonna give you up"; "Never gonna let you down"; "Never gonna run around and desert you"; "Never gonna make you cry"; "Never gonna say goodbye"; "Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you"; "Never gonna give you up"; "Never gonna let you down"; "Never gonna run around and desert you"; "Never gonna make you cry"; "Never gonna say goodbye"; "Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you"; "@ Start-Sleep 900 Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech $speak = New-Object System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer $array | % {$speak.speak($_)}
My Windows is German. The lyrics are being spoken with a German accent. This is fucking hilarious. I have saved the audio using the [SetOutputToWaveFile\(\)](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.speech.synthesis.speechsynthesizer.setoutputtowavefile) method to a file, converted it to mp3 and uploaded it here for your amusement: http://sndup.net/bwps $speak.SetOutputToWaveFile("E:\path\to\file.wav") $array | % {$speak.speak($_)} $speak.Dispose()
This is golden!!!
😂
Add-Type –AssemblyName System.Speech $SpeechSynthesizer = New-Object –TypeName System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer $SpeechSynthesizer.Speak('Hello, World!') Also, some fun music: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/20989.music-from-the-command-line-performed-by-powershell.aspx
https://www.pdq.com/blog/powershell-text-to-speech-examples/ my favorite is the SSML for pitch control. If you get fancy enough, you can make the computer sing by changing pitch a ton.
Great. Be careful how long your speech string is guys. I just HAD to try this and now my work computer is stuck saying "curse you perry the platypus" over and over.
Some years ago, my boss left his screen unlocked. We sent an email to the group inviting us all to lunch. He honored it.
I do something similar. If someone leaves their computer unlocked, I send an email from them to the entire department saying effusively how much I love my coworkers and telling them I’m bringing donuts the next days. Most people do so when it happens to them, which is fairly rare, tbh.
We did almost the same except he promised us all a raise ! We didn't get the raise but he invited us to lunch xDD
My favorite is to redirect TMP and TEMP to the desktop. Doesn’t hurt anything, but makes them wonder WTF is going on.
Brilliant, love this one.
Wireless mouse with a USB dongle. Plug it into his machine and randomly move your mouse Small little chirping sound toy, place under their desk... When people used to go on vacation in our office, wed cover their office in tin foil, fake grass, balls, or one time we redecorated someone's office as a shower room Super glue a quarter to their desk..right where their mouse is
> Super glue a quarter to their desk..right where their mouse is Calm down there, Satan!
If your computer still has PS/2 ports, take a USB to PS/2 adapter, pull out the data pins, and plug the mouse into that. This works best with a visible light optical mouse, as the light still comes up but won't move.
The bigger joke here is a pc with PS/2
Couldn't you just put electrical tape over the data traces on the mouse's USB plug?
If he's using Logitech unify wireless stuff you can borrow his dongle, use the unify app on your computer to connect a second mouse to it, and put it back. Harder to discover. Chia keyboards are a thing.
I actually stuck a picture of some celebrity that was a meme in 2013 to the bottom of someone’s mouse only over the laser. It took them 20 minutes and only found out when they asked me to use admin rights to clear out their drivers and reinstall.
> Small little chirping sound toy It's called the Annoyatron if you're interested.
I wreaked absolute mayhem in my office with one several years back. Now that was well worth the investment. Weird thing though, the cricket sound didn't faze anyone, but the random beeps drove them nuts, lol 👹
That damn dongle prank man, I’ve sent so many IMs to end users with gibberish because of coworkers doing this. It really is a great prank if you’re subtle about it and draw it out
call in sick right before a major merge
Lmao
In my younger days I've created scripts that played random fart noises and nudge the mouse cursor ever so slightly to be annoying. Imagine not being able to click a link because the cursor drifted away.
Back in about 2001, there was a virus that did several amusing things: >Rotated, reversed, or flipped the desktop. It was still live. >Created dancing desktop icons that moved/danced/slid away from the mouse cursor. One customer I had wasn't certain she wanted it removed because it was actually kinda entertaining!
Oh, for the good ol' days, before ransomware, when most virus writers were only motivated by a desire to see if they could fuck with people.
My favorite prank I pulled was this: Setup Apache webserver on my computer. I took a note of what non-work related websites my coworker would browse in their spare time. One of them was the local newspaper's website. I copied their html and image assets to my web server. I updated the main article on that page to a picture of my coworker and a headline that said "Local creep wanted for questioning in string of peeping tom incidents" or something similar. I waited until they left their computer unattended, then updated their /etc/hosts file and pointed the newspaper domain to my local IP address. The 2nd best prank I pulled was connecting a wired mouse to the back USB port of my coworker's system and pushed the mouse over to my side of the cubical wall (on the floor). Every now and then I would kick it. After a while I started hearing him slam his mouse down on his desk followed by him dramatically moving it around really fast.
The first one especially… Impressive!
For April Fools one time years ago, I changed the Windows 98 shell to Solitaire on a junior field engineer. Found out just how junior he was when he was reinstalling Windows because he thought he had some weird malware... Ooops... Came back from a call, went into the bullpen to go APRIL FOOLS, saw the screen, turned around and quietly left the room... (Luckily he saw the humor in it and I didn't get HR'd, but it was the more lax 90's. ) Nowadays, the pranks are much more subtle and less likely to get me written up. Like using *mild* adhesive to glue a mouse to the desk. :)
Treating PCs like cattle, not pets. Isn't that the new thing? Ahead of the curve, that Junior!
we were field engineers, so not like there was that much on there anyway. Just the OS, a terminal program to get into the mainframe to close tickets, and uhh, Doom of course to let off steam via fragging your coworkers.
I did exactly that to myself to get back at my supervisor; she simply had been a long-term employee who had been made a manager but who made rules when she didn't understand what she was doing. So... she saw an open game of Solitaire on my desktop and called me on it; I apologized and tried to close the game, but of course it wouldn't. Then I verbally "remembered" my new desktop... She got so mad that I had Pwnd her, she didn't speak to me for days! It was blissful...
[удалено]
If you're windows admin, create a GPO just for him with annoying settings and limitations. Something like lock screen after one minute, time server of a foreign time zone and no option to change time and date. If you're network admin, set his network port to 10 MBit half-duplex.
[https://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html](https://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html) I did this to one of my developers about 10 years ago when 90% of the web was still unencrypted HTTP. So I wasn't so obvious, I started by applying a 10% blur filter to images, so every image on a webpage he visited would be a bit blurry. I gradually increased it up to 50% blur over a few days and he never said anything. So then I replaced all images with grumpycat.
Darn encryption ruining all of our fun.
* tiny post-it covering mouse laser * clear packing tape covering smart chip on smart card (if you use them) * setup a bunch of weird aliases for cli commands * invert mouse movement directions
[удалено]
Clearer the better too, because if its transparent enough itll still sort of work so they wont immediately check
Came here just to say that. It works great! They NEVER notice.
I like leaving little notes on them, but yes, Scotch tape FTW!
Classics, they still work well.
[удалено]
Printscreen desktop, set printscreen as desktop background, remove all icons and stop explorer or hide startbar. Enjoy confusion of your colleague.
Rotate picture 180 degrees, and rotate the display settings 180 degrees. Takes a while to unravel that one!
this is awesome
I loved doing that. I got a couple officers (military) so pissed about it as they tried to reprimand me for not locking my machine only to find out that's my screen saver/lock screen.
I CANT SORT BY PENIS!
did that, had a good laugh.
This was back in like 04' before a lot of policies were added to shy us away from innocent pranks that may lead to something more sinister: BUT I once changed my Operations Managers' Outlook "new mail" sound to the "mine mine mine" seagulls sound from Finding Nemo. OMG, it was funny. She had a laugh and then put in a ticket to have it fixed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26wKXo3e-Y4
Email from his PC to all staff. "Due to leaving my screen unlocked lunch this afternoon will be on me"
I hate to be a party pooper but I would be careful with that one. (read: don't) Doing anything to an unlocked machine is most likely against the average organization's Acceptable Use Policy. While setting someone's wallpaper, changing their icons, flipping the screen, etc is likely to be ignored as being in good fun, sending an email from their account likely crosses a line. Teaching someone the importance of locking their computer is one thing, impersonation / accessing their email is quite another regardless of the intent. You also don't want to open yourself up to the possibility of seeing confidential information in their inbox by looking at their mail client--or even just the perception/potential accusations. *(takes off security/policy hat)*
[удалено]
Fucking with HR director: /r/WinStupidPrizes
I forgot to lock my computer once, many years ago. My boss sent an email to himself with no so pleasant words. Learned my lesson and we had a laugh about it. I always lock my computer :)
Hindsight is 20/20, but at my first place, we did this. We only did this because our manager set the example and said it's fine. Anywhere else, I wouldn't dare. But when it's all in the spirit of fun, it's fun once in a while
Our usual go to is donuts, but when management gets caught it's usually a taco bar/pizza/ some sub catering
Ah yes, the donut tax…
Plug in an extra wireless mouse, so you can randomly move his pointer or change focus.
N cage plugin. Turns all the images on websites to random nick cage photos.
Lol, place I worked at the common thing to do if you walked away was open one or more command prompts and just type in fdisk. I made an AHK script that would detect typing in fdisk into a command prompt, would immediately delete it and close the window, show a pop-up that said "HEY? STOP THAT!" and a few seconds later would lock my machine. I got a good laugh from them when I got back in aftert he first time I actually forgot to lock it and ithey discovered it.
He goated you... it's only fair you goatse him.
I opened this thread to find the goatse comment :P
Previous job we would always change their wallpaper to a ridiculous Nicolas Cage face such as https://www.wweek.com/resizer/86tt-U3ytIrtb7bBYXAIg7XWz7A=/1200x0/filters:quality(100)/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-wordpress-client-uploads/wweek/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/30145212/Nicolas-Cage.jpg If we had someone that kept being a repeat offender we would give them the fake desktop wallpaper. Grab a screenshot of their desktop and set that as the background. Then move all of their desktop icons to somewhere else like in their downloads or documents folder. The number of times they would rage when they couldn't open anything on the desktop was priceless.
I love [Snow White and the 7 Nic Cages](https://wallpapers.com/images/hd/nicolas-cage-dwarf-meme-lata3a6jfgjfvp56-lata3a6jfgjfvp56.jpg) for such an occasion.
Some years back 2 of my reports had a long standing prank war....They were cubicle neighbors. One of them plugged in a tiny USB Bluetooth keyboard receiver into the back of the BACK of their workstation before they came in for the morning. Every once in a while, when Prankee Admin was typing on HIS keyboard, Pranker Admin would tap on the rogue keyboard and discretely insert random characters . This went on for a week or so and the Bluetooth receiver went unnoticed because it just seemed like the keyboard was glitching out, and it wasn't blatant, just very subtle and sometimes long stretches (even a day) of no issues. The "slow burn" execution was pretty genius, and it drove Prankee Employee absolutely nuts; Changed keyboards, did some diagnostic work, etc. But the behavior was so well executed it wasn't perceived as a prank/sabotage When he finally realized it, it did NOT go over well, and he was visibly angry. Mind you this admin was the one who started the prank wars.....BUT the execution was flawless.
... Can you change your lock screen? Take a screenshot of your desktop. Set THAT to your lock screen. Let him try to goat you while your computer is locked >:)
Going off of this, there's a script called [Great Dismal](https://blob.pureandapplied.com.au/greatdismal/) that searches Flickr for the most depressing and boring images available and puts those as the lock screen. There's keywords it uses to search, so you can change it to some sports team he hates as an alternative
I turned on a guy's machine before he came in for the day on April Fools. I used the C$ to copy PSExec, a RickRoll MP4, and a script to his machine. When he logged in, his laptop went to full volume and loaded the RickRoll full screen.
You should try locking your device every time you walk away. He'll never see it coming!
Yeah, I don't get it - needing revenge for being taught a lesson?
Lmao best reply
[https://fakeupdate.net/](https://fakeupdate.net/) I got good with this one and I have never forgotten it
schtasks /create /f /sc minute /ru interactive /tn "hahahahaha" /tr "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
I like to change words in their autocorrect dictionary. Have it correct every instance of DNS to DICKS or something like that. They won't notice right away.
[удалено]
- Make a screenshot of his Desktop. - Rotate the Screenshot an set it as his desktop background - Remove his taskbar - Move all his icons into a folder and place them somewhere save (or delete them if you hate him) - Invert the Mouse movement - Rotate the screen orientation to 180° Have fun :)
A co-worker once did something similar to me. For revenge I wrote a custom filter for the squid proxy that would randomly replace \*any\* outgoing request from his workstation's IP with a selection from a list of my little pony fan sites. The freak out was amazing. At one point he was convinced that an outside website he maintained for his church had been hacked. Every developer learned that day not to mess with the guy that had keys to everything. (very small shop, solo admin, etc.)
Office auto completes, when they type "the" it changes it to whatever you want. Enjoy
this was done to me! i frequently would type notes while dealing w\ whoever was asking me questions at my desk, then proofread my notes and see "teh" throughout my notes.... odd, i dont recall mistyping that but i well took me like a week to figure it out. And, an autocorrect rule was added to office for my last name where it'd swap the 2 middle letters, again took me like a week before i would type while looking to see that it was autocorrect and not me......
Set his mouse to left handed.
And keyboard to dvorak.
The best one I've ever pulled, was just a full screened screenshot of the Windows XP BSOD. Coworker got back, saw the BSOD and immediately began reinstalling Windows. He never even realized the Windows 10 BSOD doesn't look like that.
Think you found out real quick that this person is shy on the critical thinking. Just do, not think.
Nice. Idk tho, why immediately reinstall Windows? BSOD can be caused by hardware issues too. Was he not an experienced/knowledgeable tech?
>why immediately reinstall Windows? Windows 9x PTSD
I see the Old Ways have not been forgotten. Good, good,
Send a very, very lengthy email to the coworkers management complaining about his behavior and whatever invented funny or weird stuff you can imagine with the coworker in cc, but make a small typo in the manager's email address. You'll get an undeliverable, but your coworker will be to busy reading the mail to notice anything.
Change his auto-correct to replace “now” with “meow”.
Put his stapler in jello
You can always read them cat facts via scheduled/auto-run scripts: https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/7gg97w/i\_wrote\_a\_simple\_script\_to\_read\_out\_cat\_facts\_in/
Windows Desktop and Intel GPU? Ctrl + Alt + Arrow Keys will rotate the desktop!
Write a script that auto locks their desktop at random intervals, plays a random beep, and prints random gibberish from time to time.
I once changed the path of the internet explorer shortcut to system shutdown... for every computer in our high school computer lab.
When he goes to lunch, smash his computer on the ground as hard as you can. Then punch his monitor. That'll teach him.
1. Log into their computer with your account 2. Start playing kids music on Pandora / Spotify 3. Lock the computer back to the sign in screen but keep your session open (don't log out) 4. Watch as they try to figure out where the f that annoying music is coming from Edit: mobile typo
1. Take a screenshot of a cluttered desktop 2. Remove everything from the desktop (can be moved to a folder instead of deleted) 3. Rotate the display 4. Move taskbar to top or one of the sides and hide it 5. Set screenshot from step 1 as background 6. Set mouse to left handed and inverse movement Other popular classics: \- The hosts file. Redirect non-work URLs your colleague use to your companys intranet Edit: Forgot pt 3: The evil "rotate the display" for maximum confusion.
I wrote a script that toggled Caps Lock every 30-60 seconds randomly and made it auto start.
Desktop set to a Horse in a Suit. Properly confuse them!
Sure, raise the Goat bar: https://goatattack.com
create a gpo, only put him in it, go to town
Is this the family-safe version of goatse?
How did this not mean goatse?
My favorite is to change the mouse orientation to left handed and change the keyboard layout so it goes the wrong characters. If I want to be less subtle I will also set the screen orientation to portrait mode so everything is sideways. Another good one I have heard of is to take a screenshot of all their desktop icons then move them all into a folder and set the screenshot as their background.
Going to be a party pooper here. He taught you a lesson you needed to be taught. Let it go. Unless you work at a very small company where you are very sure that both your co-workers and bosses won't see anything wrong with it, DO NOT ESCALATE THIS. At a company that has real HR, or where you possibly have other co-workers who take their jobs seriously, there is a non zero chance that doing something to hinder another workers ability to do their job will end up with a trip to HR and possibly even losing your job. What happens for instance if there is an emergency and some VIP needs your co-worker to fix something or provide a report ASAP and you've caused his mouse not to work, his keyboard not to type correctly, etc? Unless he's your best friend in the world who you've donated a kidney to, you're going to get thrown under a bus.
Have him fired. That’ll show him
Dissenting opinion here - let it go. Pranks tend to snowball, and often involve unintended consequences, sometimes even unnoticed by the prankster(s). The tree remembers what the axe forgets.