[skilled]

Crazy to think that it has been 15 years since I first booted up Metasploit. I can recall the screen glaring back at me -- with EFnet in the background -- in my dimly lit room like it was yesterday.

Man, those were the golden days no doubt. :)

[Fnoord]

Golden days of what exactly? Nostalgia?

[jakobdabo]

Golden days of the pure hacker culture, I guess. The "underground" scenes (warez, vx, demo). Now it's all business.

[Fnoord]

A matter of perspective. The phreakers would disagree, the age of MSIE is a dark age IMO, having services enabled by default whilst connected to WAN was ridiculous, and here the laws got more and more repressive throughout the years.

If you played computer games in 90s or used a computer in general you were deemed a geek or nerd. Nowadays everyone and their mother has a smartphone plus internet connectivity at home. Meanwhile, technology gets more dystopian but that also provides moral opportunities...

[FreakLegion]

I'd say the golden days were a decade or so earlier, but no doubt different scenes peaked at different times. The release of Second Reality in 93 was the high water mark for me.

[jakobdabo]

I was never really into demos, so thank you, it looks very interesting, and the source code is released too [1]. Will try to fill the gaps, even if just a little bit.

My high water mark was '96 when Aleph One released his stack smashing article in Phrack. So yeah, more than two decades, not 15 years.

[1] https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality

[tptacek]

It was absolutely all business 15 years ago.

[skilled]

You're not wrong. I definitely have strong nostalgia feelings towards that time in my life. But I also know that the scene was much more relaxed, enthused, and fun in those days. Maybe some of it has carried over to now, but I highly doubt it.