8 ms·

Funny story. When I was in grad school, the math department office I was in had Linux computers administrated by the department. One day I was goofing in my sha

by abnry 3y ago

Funny story. When I was in grad school, the math department office I was in had Linux computers administrated by the department. One day I was goofing in my shared office with a fellow grad student by playing with what resources were available. We were trying sudo and failed with enough silly passwords that we got the "this incident will be reported" message. I confidently told my officemate that these messages were never saved and recorded. A few moments later, from our open office door (which I assume meant all our conversation was able to be overheard), our IT lady from down the hall came in and said to me "Download the internet, really?" Because yes, I did type, while not saying I was doing so, "sudo DOWNLOAD THE INTERNET" into the terminal while goofing. Funny story but I did feel a bit embarrassed at the time.

nailer 3y ago
To be fair in 2023, a lot of people are building LLMs and starting with downloading the internet.
- deusum 3y ago
  Save a lot of time and space by doing an rm -rf first
  - adolph 3y ago
    sudo !!
    - eimrine 3y ago
      sudo rm -rf /* # unless previous, this command is working, handle with care.
stilley2 3y ago
I once entered 'sudo echo hi" or something similar on a large HPCC and received an email back from a sysadmin that just said "hello".
- 1lint 3y ago
  That's an amusing anecdote, though I find it bothersome the sysadmin failed to correctly implement the echo command
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - KyeRussell 3y ago
    Someone turned up the temperature hyperparameter.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    I find it bothersome that the "yes" command outputs "y" by default instead of "yes". False advertising! Since Unix loves short concise command names, why not just name it "y"?
    - purpleidea 3y ago
      It does so you can pipe to commands that want a string of "press y/N" sort of things. If you want yes write `yes yes`. And one character commands are almost generally avoided. So don't name it "y".
      - kaba0 3y ago
        I think it was just a joke from parent, not a legitimate question.
      - DonHopkins 3y ago
        $ y not not not not not not not not not ...
- ww520 3y ago
  There's the talk command on Unix. We used to do a 'who' to find out who're on the system and 'talk' to them.
ww520 3y ago
Speaking of interaction with the admin. Back in the days when I was in school, the computer lab ran a Honeywell mainframe with terminals. I wrote a program emulating the logon screen to intercept the username and password of the unsuspecting students logging on and to email them to me. I was going to post the list of all the usernames and passwords at the end of the semester on the wall. I dubbed it the Fishing project with my friends (yes, that's before all the phishing activities went rampant). I collected dozens of usernames and passwords before the professor of my CS class stopped me one day after class and said, you better stop whatever you're doing. Apparently the system saved the typing of all sessions and the admin actually went through all of them. The next semester all the terminals had a physical switch installed that had to be pressed to reset the terminal before logon. That killed any running program. I was glad to play a small part in improving the security of my school lab.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  That’s quite similar to my story. While at high school, I wrote an innocent program to open the terminals at the nearby college for chat sessions - nothing nefarious. The sysadm saw what I did and realised I could use it to phish passwords. Next time I went to use the computer lab, the terminals were locked down. Showing my age but this would have been 1984 or so… a remarkably early contribution to security?
  - ww520 3y ago
    So we all are ;)
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  This is more or less how I started to administer the unix cluster at my uni in 1993 as a student. I wrote a fake su program that woul d impersonate the real one, asked the admin to help with something, got the root password and went to them to tell them the password a few days later. And offered my help in exchange of a seat at their shared office and my own workstation. They were glad to get someone because unix was new to them (they were using Novell). It was new to me too but I learned a huge amount of things that were actually bootstrap my IT career after my PhD.

by abnry 3y ago

nailer 3y ago

To be fair in 2023, a lot of people are building LLMs and starting with downloading the internet.

deusum 3y ago
Save a lot of time and space by doing an rm -rf first
- adolph 3y ago
  sudo !!
  - eimrine 3y ago
    sudo rm -rf /* # unless previous, this command is working, handle with care.

stilley2 3y ago

I once entered 'sudo echo hi" or something similar on a large HPCC and received an email back from a sysadmin that just said "hello".

1lint 3y ago
That's an amusing anecdote, though I find it bothersome the sysadmin failed to correctly implement the echo command
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  Someone turned up the temperature hyperparameter.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  I find it bothersome that the "yes" command outputs "y" by default instead of "yes". False advertising! Since Unix loves short concise command names, why not just name it "y"?
  - purpleidea 3y ago
    It does so you can pipe to commands that want a string of "press y/N" sort of things. If you want yes write `yes yes`. And one character commands are almost generally avoided. So don't name it "y".
    - kaba0 3y ago
      I think it was just a joke from parent, not a legitimate question.
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      $ y not not not not not not not not not ...
ww520 3y ago
There's the talk command on Unix. We used to do a 'who' to find out who're on the system and 'talk' to them.

ww520 3y ago

Speaking of interaction with the admin. Back in the days when I was in school, the computer lab ran a Honeywell mainframe with terminals. I wrote a program emulating the logon screen to intercept the username and password of the unsuspecting students logging on and to email them to me. I was going to post the list of all the usernames and passwords at the end of the semester on the wall. I dubbed it the Fishing project with my friends (yes, that's before all the phishing activities went rampant). I collected dozens of usernames and passwords before the professor of my CS class stopped me one day after class and said, you better stop whatever you're doing. Apparently the system saved the typing of all sessions and the admin actually went through all of them. The next semester all the terminals had a physical switch installed that had to be pressed to reset the terminal before logon. That killed any running program. I was glad to play a small part in improving the security of my school lab.

doctor_eval 3y ago
That’s quite similar to my story. While at high school, I wrote an innocent program to open the terminals at the nearby college for chat sessions - nothing nefarious. The sysadm saw what I did and realised I could use it to phish passwords. Next time I went to use the computer lab, the terminals were locked down. Showing my age but this would have been 1984 or so… a remarkably early contribution to security?
- ww520 3y ago
  So we all are ;)
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
This is more or less how I started to administer the unix cluster at my uni in 1993 as a student. I wrote a fake su program that woul d impersonate the real one, asked the admin to help with something, got the root password and went to them to tell them the password a few days later. And offered my help in exchange of a seat at their shared office and my own workstation. They were glad to get someone because unix was new to them (they were using Novell). It was new to me too but I learned a huge amount of things that were actually bootstrap my IT career after my PhD.