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The AOL Protocol

When you hear the phrase “The AOL Protocol”, I bet most of you immediately think of FDO, right?
Although FDO is a part of the AOL protocol, it in no way encompasses the big picture. When I use
the term “The AOL protocol”, I refer to how the AOL client and server interact with each other,
how data is prepared, how it is sent, and how it can be manipulated.

There currently exists no formal documentation of the AOL protocol, or at least one that is
publicly available. For this reason, I have taken it upon myself to strip the bits of
information from my feeble mind and write a document with at least basic information about
the AOL protocol. The information included in this document is what I have learned, from
exploration, help from others, and just stumbling upon it. I in no way guarantee the accuracy
of the information contained herein. That said, here is what I know.

Koceilah Rekouche krekouche@pushstart.info

The history of phishing traces back in important ways to the mid-1990s when hacking
software facilitated the mass targeting of people in password stealing scams on America
Online (AOL). The first of these software programs was mine, called AOHell, and it was
where the word phishing was coined. The software provided an automated password
and credit card-stealing mechanism starting in January 1995. Though the practice of
tricking users in order to steal passwords or information possibly goes back to the
earliest days of computer networking, AOHell’s phishing system was the first automated
tool made publicly available for this purpose. 1 The program influenced the creation of
many other automated phishing systems that were made over a number of years. These
tools were available to amateurs who used them to engage in a countless number of
phishing attacks. By the later part of the decade, the activity moved from AOL to other
networks and eventually grew to involve professional criminals on the internet. What
began as a scheme by rebellious teenagers to steal passwords evolved into one of the
top computer security threats affecting people, corporations, and governments.