Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hacks at the
Although the practice is unsanctioned by the university, and students have sometimes been arraigned on trespassing charges for hacking,[18][19][20] hacks have substantial significance to MIT's history and student culture. Student bloggers working for the MIT Admissions Office have often written about MIT hacks, including those occurring during Campus Preview Weekend (CPW), an event welcoming admitted prospective freshman students.[21] Alumni bloggers on the MIT Alumni Association website also report and document some of the more memorable hacks.[22] Since the mid-1970s, the student-written guide How To Get Around MIT (HowToGAMIT) has included a chapter on hacking, and discusses history, hacker groups, ethics, safety tips, and risks of the activity.[23]
For a decade, the
Famous hacks include a weather balloon labeled "MIT" appearing at the 50-yard line at the Harvard/Yale football game in 1982, the placing of a campus police cruiser on the roof of the Great Dome,[29] converting the Great Dome into R2-D2 or a large yellow ring to acknowledge the release of Star Wars Episode I and Lord of the Rings respectively,[30] or placing full-sized replicas of the Wright Flyer and a fire truck to acknowledge the anniversaries of first powered controlled flight and the September 11 attacks respectively.[31]
Terminology
At MIT, the terms hack and hacker have many shades of meaning,
Roof and tunnel hacking, a form of urban exploration, is also related to but not identical to "hacking" as described in this article. Some hacks do involve overcoming barriers to physical access (e.g. placing a half-scale Apollo Lunar Module atop the Great Dome),[35] but many other stunts do not require such specialized skills.
Cultural aspects
Viewed from an
"Tribute", "memorial", or "commemorative" hacks note the arrival, passing, or anniversary of some noteworthy person, tradition, institution, or idea (e.g. the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia).
Like most art exhibitions, the great majority of hacks are temporary installations; most are removed within a day or so by MIT Physical Plant, the MIT Confined Space Rescue Team (CSRT),
Although many traditional college pranks have involved maximizing embarrassment or inconvenience for a victim or target, often with a personal or political point to make versus harassment, such antics are usually disparaged by MIT hackers as "unimaginative" or "boring". Often the target of a hack is an abstract concept (e.g.
Writers for the third-party, independent Internet prankster site Zug once compared humorous responses at MIT and Harvard, by posting similar banners over main entrances to their respective campuses which proclaimed "Institute of Nowlege". Regarding Harvard, they concluded, "The question: is the sense of humor still alive in modern-day Harvard students? The answer, it turns out, is no." Regarding MIT, they said, "So it's official: MIT students have a better sense of humor, hands down, than Harvard students. MIT students are more imaginative, more fun-loving, and probably smarter as well. Truly, MIT is the Institute of NOWLEGE." The Zug pranksters also noted and documented great differences in the reactions of campus police, maintenance workers, and passersby, upon seeing the ironically punned banners.[59]
MIT hacks can push the limits of technical skill, and sometimes fail in spite of meticulous planning. Even these engineering failures have been acknowledged to have educational value, and sometimes a follow-up attempt succeeds. One hack on the Great Dome is documented as having finally succeeded on the fourth try, after a complete re-engineering of both the installed artifact and the installation method.[60]
Smaller projects that can be completed by an individual student are sometimes accorded the honorific "a great hack" by other students, if they combine technical elegance with a hackish sense of humor. For example, an MIT undergrad transformed an ordinary grocery shopping cart into a high-performance electric vehicle, and was frequently seen riding around campus in his "LOLrioKart".[61] The shopping cart had a claimed top speed over 45 miles per hour (72 km/h), and also had a complex steering wheel linkage and a low turning radius for maneuverability in tight spaces. The student was a strong advocate of the Open Source Hardware philosophy, and incorporated detailed documentation of his projects and a tutorial on building custom wheel hub motors in his blog.[62] The ersatz vehicle was prominently displayed at many MIT events, as well as at the Cambridge Science Festival. As a crowning mark of recognition by the outside world, the LOLrioKart driver once received a traffic ticket from the Cambridge Police, a copy of which was proudly displayed online.[63]
Some of the best large-scale hacks (e.g. the Caltech cannon heist) have involved multiple teams of hackers working on coordinated but diverse subtasks such as fund-raising, "social engineering", rigging, transportation logistics, gold electroplating, and precision numerical controlled machining, calling on a wide range of technical and management skills.[64] Not surprisingly, some hacker teams have gone on to found start-up business ventures, though they may be reluctant to reveal their earlier exploits until many years have passed.[citation needed]
Famous hacks
One classic hack involved a police car with its flashing warning lights operating. The unusual aspect of this hack was its position—on top of MIT's Great Dome. The car was found to be a gutted, junked, heavy Chevrolet, painted meticulously to match the MIT Campus Police patrol cars. The car's number was
Due to MIT's proximity to Harvard, many hacks involve the annual Harvard–Yale football game. Because of the Cambridge rivalry between MIT and Harvard, hackers often are found at the games, and they have come up with some of the most famous hacks in the Institute's history.[66][67]
One such notable hack attempt targeting the 1948 Harvard–Yale football game[68] involved the use of primer cord. One night shortly before the game MIT students snuck into the Harvard stadium and buried primer cord just under the field. The plan was to burn the letters MIT into the middle of the field during the game. However, their work was uncovered by groundskeepers and disabled. During the game the hackers were apprehended while wearing heavy coats on a fair-weather day. The coats were lined with batteries, obviously intended to be used to detonate the primer cord. An apocryphal story is that an MIT dean came to their defense, opening his own battery-lined coat and claiming that "all Tech men carry batteries"; an MIT dean did show up, but he was not wearing batteries. This phrase has since become common among MIT students.
The Harvard-Yale football game was again the target of MIT hackers in 1982
In 1990 an MIT banner was successfully launched from an end zone using a model rocket engine shortly before Yale attempted a field goal kick.[71] In 1996, the Harvard logos on the scoreboard were hacked from VE-RI-TAS to read HU-GE-EGO instead.[72]
Another traditional hacking target has been the bronze
The cleverness of many MIT hacks has even resulted in urban legends about supposed hacks that may not have occurred. One rumored hack involved a certain student's adherence to classical conditioning behavior response, as studied by Harvard Professor B. F. Skinner. Throughout the off-season, this supposed student visited the Harvard football stadium during his lunch break. He dressed in a black and white striped shirt and trousers, filled his pockets with bird-seed, then went on the field, blew a whistle, and spread his birdseed on the field. The result of all of this effort, the story goes, is that on opening day as the Harvard football team took the field to face their opponent, the referee blew his whistle to signal the start of the game, and the field was suddenly inundated by a flock of birds looking for their lunch. Despite sounding like a classic MIT hack, this particular prank has never been verified. The author of a 1990 book about pranks pulled by MIT students stated that he had not come across clear documentation of this tale during his years of research.[78]
On the other hand, at least one hack involved a staged event that never occurred, when hackers convinced major news media that they had created an indoor snowstorm in Baker House dormitory.[79]
When MIT replaced older mercury-vapor lamps with high-efficiency LED lamps[80] to illuminate the Great Dome, hackers started changing the color[81] of the lights to reflect various occasions—Earth Day, the Fourth of July, etc.[82][83][84] Although reprogramming the lights is technically straightforward, these Great Dome lighting hacks are very visible from Boston's Back Bay district, across the Charles River.
In September 2011, hackers installed 153 (= 9 × 17) custom-made wirelessly-controlled color-changing high-power
Instead of a one-shot temporary installation, the hackers have designed and built a permanent facility that can be re-used repeatedly by the MIT community. An understanding has been reached with the EAPS Department, which is headquartered in the Green Building, to allow the light display hardware to remain installed in each window. To avoid annoying the occupants and to allow late-working staff to "opt out", each light display is equipped with a manual override button, which will disable the pixel lighting for that window for several hours after it is pressed. In addition, the hackers have released open-source software tools used to develop new display patterns, so that others can design and deploy new stationary or animated images, in cooperation with the hacker engineers.[85]
IHTFP
IHTFP
The letters "IHTFP" have been featured prominently on some hacks,[90][91][92][93][94] but are more usually subtly embedded within other hacks as an inside joke. A very common motif in the MIT Brass Rat (class ring) prior to 2013 was the inclusion of the letters "IHTFP" hidden somewhere within the frame of the bezel.
The 2016 celebrations of MIT's "crossing of the Charles" in 1916, featured a translation as "I Honor Theory (and) Forgo Practice". This was part of a humorous sketch addressing friction between theoretical and applied researchers.[citation needed]
Caltech rivalry
MIT and Caltech have been prank rivals since Spring 2005, when a group of Caltech students traveled to Cambridge to pull a string of pranks during "Campus Preview Weekend" (CPW) for prospective new MIT students. The stunts included covering up the word "Massachusetts" in the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" engraving on the main building facade with a banner, so that it read "That Other Institute of Technology". A group of MIT hackers quickly responded by altering the banner so that the inscription read "The Only Institute of Technology".[95]
MIT students retaliated for CPW in April 2006, when students posing as the "Howe & Ser Moving Co." abducted the 130-year-old, 1.7-ton Fleming House cannon and moved it to their campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thus reprising a similar prank performed by
During MIT's CPW in 2007, Caltech distributed a complete fake edition of The Tech (MIT's student newspaper) with the headline article reading "MIT Invents the Interweb". Another article announced the discovery, "Infinite Corridor Not Actually Infinite", referring to MIT's iconic main thoroughfare. The edition included a mock weather forecast, referring often to how sunny Pasadena (where Caltech is located) is compared to Boston, as well as other satirical articles.[95]
In 2008, Caltech students provided a "Puzzle Zero" in the MIT Mystery Hunt which when solved, told solvers to "CALL 1-626-848-3780 ASAP". When MIT students dialed the number, they heard, "Thank you for calling the Caltech Admissions Office. If you are another MIT student wishing to transfer to Caltech, please download our transfer application form from www.caltech.edu. If you are an MIT student not wishing to transfer to Caltech, we wish you the best of luck, and hope you find happiness someday...."[97]
Around Thanksgiving weekend in 2009, yet another fake edition of The Tech was released, alleging that MIT had been sold to Caltech and would become "Caltech East: School of Humanities". Students would be required to take a core of literature, history, philosophy, and economics, but science subjects would be eliminated.[95]
In the past few years, MIT hackers have tended to ignore Caltech "nuisance" pranks, instead preferring to perform more imaginatively engineered hacks on their own home campus. In particular, the majority of documented hacks occurring during CPW have been perpetrated by MIT students themselves.[98][99] MIT hackers have only rarely interfered with Caltech traditions, rituals, or celebrations. But some MIT hackers do occasionally engage in low-level "sniping" back and forth with Caltech pranksters. For example, hackers made a website http://www.mitrejects.com redirect to Caltech's homepage. Caltech then did the same, with http://caltechrejects.com redirecting to the MIT homepage.
A possible change in attitude started when a TARDIS, which hackers had placed on the MIT Little Dome (August 25, 2010) and the MIT Great Dome (August 30, 2010), was transported to the roof of Baxter Hall at Caltech (January 4, 2011) by MIT and Caltech pranksters, where it remained for several weeks. The traveling time-machine subsequently reappeared atop Birge Hall at the University of California, Berkeley (January 29, 2011), and then rematerialized on the Durand Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering Building at Stanford University (March 18, 2011). The TARDIS came complete with a helpful note explaining how to disassemble it, and suggesting passing it on to other unexplored destinations.[100]
Selected hacks
The MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery website[101] has an extensive but far from complete catalog of past hacks related to MIT, including numerous documentary photos. More-complete coverage, especially of older hacks, appears in the books listed under Further Reading below, but these printed volumes appear only intermittently. The listing here only summarizes a few salient examples from MIT's long tradition of hacking.
The Great Dome
Date | Hack | the point/notes |
---|---|---|
Apr 2019 | Dome decorated as large Captain America's Shield | In honor of the release of the movie Avengers: Endgame, "dozens of people worked on the project for months, which they started planning about a year ago after learning a new Marvel movie was going to be released."[102] |
10 Jan 2013 | Pac-Man and Blinky appeared on the scaffolding covering the dome during reconstruction | Intended to serve as a metaphor for the semester. "Pac-Man represents the unquenchable search for knowledge, while Blinky represents the unforeseen distractions that may occur."[103][104] |
19 May 2009 | Lunar Lander placed on dome | Celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 10 and the Lunar Module, May 19, 2009 |
Nov 2006 | Triforce installed atop the Great Dome | In commemoration of the release of the video game The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.[105] |
11 Sep 2006 | Full-size "MIT Fire Department" fire truck placed Dome | Presumed to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The logo painted on the truck's sides featured the two figures from the MIT seal dressed as firemen, along with the motto MEMINIMUS ("We remember").[106] |
28 Feb 2006 | Torino Olympic medal placed on dome | In honor of the Torino, Italy, Winter Olympics.[107] |
16 Jul 2007 | Dome "scarred" with Harry Potter's lightning bolt scar | To celebrate the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.[81][108] |
17 Dec 2003 | A replica of the first Wright brothers airplane, the Wright Flyer, was placed on the Great Dome | In honor of the 100th anniversary of their first powered flight. |
9 May 1994 | A car painted as an MIT Campus Police car appeared on top of the Great Dome. | This hack gained recognition on many local news sources and on national television, and is widely celebrated for its realism, attention to detail, and humor.[65] |
31 Oct 1979 | A lifesize plastic cow appeared on top of the Great Dome (Alpha Tau Omega). | The cow and a photo of two students (Mike Heaney '81 and Aaron Bobick '81) hauling it up to the dome were later installed by the MIT Museum in the Stata Center .
|
Whimsical
Date | Hack | the point/notes |
---|---|---|
27 Oct, 2012 | MIT Gangnam Style parody video
|
Although it might not strictly be categorized as a hack, the Psy, the star and producer of the original video.[112]
|
15 Sep 2004 | Vannevar Shrubbery Room | A small alcove in the Infinite Corridor was closed off by a painted wall with a door. Opening the door revealed a "room" inside, full of small shrubs or bushes, plus some painted and framed artwork. An official-looking sign next to the door labeled it the "Vannevar Shrubbery Room", a parody of the nearby larger "Vannevar Bush Room", whose entrance location had recently been moved around the corner due to renovations.[113] |
23 Apr 2003 | Athena cluster gnome invasion | Hundreds of garden gnomes of various shapes and sizes appeared in and around the W20 Student Center Athena cluster.
|
7 June 1996 | Buzzword Bingo | During a speech made by Vice-President Al Gore at the graduation ceremony, the graduates played Buzzword bingo using cards which had been distributed by hackers. The cards featured technical words which students believed were overused by people outside the technical professions, such as "Information Superhighway". Gore, who was informed of the hack, acknowledged it during his speech.[114] |
Technical
Date | Hack | the point/notes |
---|---|---|
Apr 2010 | A full living room set hung inverted outside the MIT Media Lab | Complete with chairs, functional "floor lamp", and a properly set up billiards table, ready for play.[115] |
Oct 2007 | "GO SOX!" banner across the 1,000+ foot (300+ m) span between the MacGregor House Dormitory and Tang Graduate Dormitory towers | To cheer on the Boston Red Sox during the 2007 World Series.[116] |
Sep 2006 | Part of the side of Simmons Hall was turned into a giant blue LED display. | This project, implemented with under $150 of components, was funded by the Simmons Rush budget.[117] |
9 Dec 1991 | Fire hose and Hydrant Installation | It has been often said that "Getting an Education from MIT is like taking a drink from a Fire Hose", inspiring hackers to connect a real fire hose and a concrete-embedded Stata Center.[118]
|
31 Oct 1979 | A lifesize plastic cow appeared on top of the Great Dome (Alpha Tau Omega). | The cow and a photo of two students (Mike Heaney '81 and Aaron Bobick '81) hauling it up to the dome were later installed by the MIT Museum in the Stata Center .
|
College Prank
Date | Hack | the point/notes |
---|---|---|
Sep 2007 | Halo MJOLNIR armor helmet and assault rifle
|
To commemorate the release of Halo 3.[119] |
Aug 2006 | Rubber Duck invasion Simmons Hall poster campaigne at Caltech | A welcome back poster and a few dozen rubber ducks in the name of Simmons Hall at MIT appeared on the Caltech campus in mid-August. They were accompanied by posters that presented proposed renovations to add Simmons-like architectural elements (particularly the ones often regarded as useless by MIT students) to Caltech dormitories, which were undergoing renovation.
|
Apr 2006 | "Howe & Ser Moving Co." Caltech visit | A 130-year-old, 1.7 ton cannon was moved from Caltech to MIT via a fake moving company "Howe & Ser Moving Co." This marked the 20th anniversary of when 11 students from nearby Harvey Mudd College removed the cannon from the front of the Fleming House. This time, the cannon was situated in a prominent place on the MIT campus in front of the Green Building and was adorned with a unique Brass Rat. It was symbolically pointed at its previous owner, Caltech.[64] Twenty to thirty members of Fleming House later traveled to MIT and reclaimed their cannon on April 10, 2006. They left a toy cannon with the note, "Here's something more your size.":[120][121] |
1 Apr 1998 | Disney buys MIT | As an April Fool's Day prank, the MIT home page was replaced with a page announcing the university had been bought by The Walt Disney Company for $6.9 billion. The hacked page showed a picture of Mickey Mouse ears atop the Great Dome, and replaced the letter I in MIT with the lower-case "i" from Disney's wordmark. It even contained a fake press release with statements purportedly from Disney and MIT officials, detailing terms of the acquisition.[122] |
Historical
Date | Hack | the point/notes |
---|---|---|
Nov 1963 | The first recorded reference to malicious hacking | The first ever reference to malicious |
Oct 1958 | Construction of the Smoot Bridge markers | Oliver R. Smoot, a pledge of MIT's Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in 1958, was used to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. As he lay on the sidewalk of the bridge that carries Massachusetts Avenue across the Charles River, markings were made at intervals corresponding to his height. The bridge was measured to be 364.4 Smoots (plus or minus one ear) in length. During renovation of the bridge in 1964 the markings were carefully restored, and the markings are still carefully maintained today. |
1930s | Streetcar/thermite bomb incident | Ken Wadleigh (who later in life became a dean at MIT) and 4 others welded a streetcar to its metal rails by first distracting the |
Accidents
In the early morning of April 26, 2017, recent computer science graduate Nicholas William Paggi died while hacking the Great Dome, when he slipped and fell to his death.[128]
See also
- Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Hacker (programmer subculture)
- Hacker (term)
- Hacker ethic
- Guerrilla art
- List of practical joke topics
- Roof and tunnel hacking
- Tech Model Railroad Club
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- ^ "Annual Event Hacks [CPW]". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved May 1, 2011.
- ^ IHTFP Gallery Advisory Board. "TARDIS on building 7, great dome, and beyond". Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People: The MIT Gallery of Hacks. Retrieved April 18, 2011.
- ^ "Welcome to the IHTFP Gallery!". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved May 1, 2011.
- ^ Serrano, Alejandro (April 29, 2019). "MIT 'hackers' turn Great Dome into Captain America's shield". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
- ^ Landry, Lauren (January 11, 2013). "New Year, New Hack: MIT Students Place Pac-Man On Top of the Great Dome". BostInno. Streetwise Media. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
- ^ Dezenski, Lauren (January 11, 2013). "In whimsical retro tribute, Pac-Man appears on MIT's Great Dome". Boston.com. NY Times Co. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
- ^ Hacks and Pranks at MIT -Photography by Boston and Cambridge Editorial and Commercial Photographer Eric Schmiedl – Page 7[dead link]. Ericschmiedl.com. Retrieved on May 7, 2011.
- ^ IHTFP Hack Gallery: Fire Truck on the Great Dome Archived March 19, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Hacks.mit.edu (September 11, 2006). Retrieved on 2011-05-07.
- ^ Lowell, Jessie (March 2, 2006). "MIT wins the gold". MIT Admissions. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
- ^ McGann, Matt (July 19, 2005). "Pottermania hits MIT". MIT Admissions. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
- ^ H., Anna (October 27, 2012). "MIT Gangnam Style". MIT Admissions. MIT. Retrieved March 8, 2013.
- ^ Pourian, Jessica J. (November 6, 2012). "MIT Gangnam Style: gone viral". The Tech. Archived from the original on November 19, 2012. Retrieved March 8, 2013.
- ^ "MIT 'Chomsky Style' Best Gangnam Parody Yet? Noted Intellectual Steals The Wacky Show (VIDEO)". Huffington Post. October 29, 2012. Retrieved December 11, 2012.
- ^ Retrieved from: "Scooter Braun on Twitter: "sorry Harvard Business School but MIT GANGNAM STYLE was killer! acapella part was awesome"". Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved March 8, 2013.
- ^ "Vannevar Shrubbery Room". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
- ^ "IHTFP Hacks Gallery: Al Gore Buzzword Bingo". Archived from the original on September 8, 2016.
- ^ IHTFP Hack Gallery: Upside-Down Lounge appears near the Media Lab Archived August 1, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Hacks.mit.edu (April 8, 2010). Retrieved on 2011-05-07.
- ^ Hacks and Pranks at MIT -Photography by Boston and Cambridge Editorial and Commercial Photographer Eric Schmiedl – Page 12. Ericschmiedl.com (October 25, 2007). Retrieved on 2011-05-07. [dead link]
- ^ "Simmons LED Display - dheera.net - Dheera Venkatraman's web site". September 30, 2013. Archived from the original on September 30, 2013. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
- ^ "Fire Hose Drinking Fountain". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
- ^ IHTFP Hack Gallery: John Harvard plays Halo3 Archived August 1, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Hacks.mit.edu (September 24, 2007). Retrieved on 2011-05-07.
- ^ Howe & Ser Moving Co Archived July 17, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Howeandser.com (April 6, 2006). Retrieved on 2011-05-07.
- ^ The Fleming Cannon Archived March 13, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. The Fleming Cannon (April 10, 2006). Retrieved on 2011-05-07.
- ^ "Is Disney buying MIT or was the MIT home page hacked?". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- ^ "Hacking and Blue Boxes". November 20, 2011.
- ^ "First Recorded Usage of "Hacker"". August 28, 2008.
- ^ "Telephone hackers active" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 14, 2016. Retrieved January 4, 2017.
- ^ "Happy 60th Birthday to the Word "Hack"". Archived from the original on April 10, 2015. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
- ^ "From the Cathouse, an Editorial, by weasel, who isn't one" (PDF). Voodoo, April 1, 1968, p. 28. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
- ^ "MIT graduate and 'brilliant programmer' dies on campus". Retrieved December 28, 2017.
Further reading
- Haverson, Ira; Fulton-Pearson, Tiffany, eds. (1996). "Is This The Way To Baker House?": A Compendium of MIT Hacking Lore. OCLC 44268592.[ISBN missing]
- Peterson, T. F. (2011). ISBN 978-0-262-51584-9. — Extensive documentation, many photographs, special essays
- Peterson, T. F. (2003). ISBN 978-0-262-66137-9.
- HowToGAMIT Staff (1969—?). How To Get Around MIT (HowToGAMIT). hdl:1721.3/188281— a defunct, annual, student-written guide, which included a "Hacking" chapter starting in the mid-1970s
- ISBN 978-0-262-01594-3. — includes a chapter on "Hacking" (pp. 95–106) from the viewpoint of a former Associate Provost and former residential faculty dormitory housemaster
- Leibowitz, Brian (1990). The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery, and Pranks at MIT. ISBN 978-0-917027-03-1.
- ISBN 978-0-312-07810-2.
External links
- IHTFP Hack Gallery — An extensive but far from complete online documentary archive about MIT hacks. Scanty coverage prior to 1989, indexing is incomplete, updating is sporadic. Features a number of documentary photos.
- Howe & Ser Moving Company — Documentation of the Caltech cannon heist
- "The Great Breast of Knowledge". Archived from the original on March 11, 2007. Retrieved May 17, 2006. — by Phil Kesten
- What is IHTFP? — Short overview
- A list of numerous possible meanings for IHTFP
- A summary of Harvard-Yale Football game hacks
- Details of the MIT banner launched at the 1990 Harvard-Yale game
- Information on the legend of the Pavlovian "birdseed" hack
- MIT Campus Cruiser Hack Summary
- The Cow on the Dome Hack Details