An unusual Instant Messenger question

[Nathan Meyers]

On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 02:32:04PM -0500, David Kramer wrote:
> On Friday 10 January 2003 09:19 am, Bill Horne wrote:
> 
> > Now, of course, I could just yell at him to get off the computer,
> > but I'd like to do this more subtly than that, and encourage him
> > to keep track of his online time so as to avoid having an automatic
> > logoff message sent to his friends.
> 
> This sounds more like a meatspace issue than a computer issue to me, but if 
> you are determined to find a technical solution, I would download the source 
> code for one of the open source IM clients out there and look at what it 
> sends to disconnect.

My approach to this (which isn't pretty :-) would be to interpose a relay
- such as a Jabber server - through which your progeny would connect,
and hack that relay to take over the protocol stream to do a sign-off.
This isn't a trivial problem - there's some reverse engineering to be
pulled off, although all the necessary protocol knowledge is probably
embedded somewhere in Jabber code.

This is form of man-in-the-middle attack, and will look great on your
hacking credentials.

Nathan Meyers
nmeyers at javalinux.net