The heroic version of the story is now almost 40 years old[1]. (One HN mention with the link to a HTMLized version is here[2].) In both cases, the upshot is tha

The heroic version of the story is now almost 40 years old[1]. (One HN mention with the link to a HTMLized version is here[2].) In both cases, the upshot is that as long as you have a running shell with root privileges, at least one existing executable file on the filesystem, and the means to overwrite that file with arbitrary binary content, you can write a small program which can recreate a skeleton system structure and dig yourself out of the hole. The reason why this keeps happening is that in regular UNIX root is omnipotent and the filesystem is ultimately unprotected. Immutable systems and restricted execution environments may make this a thing of the past. [1] https://www.wolczko.com/rm.txt https://www.wolczko.com/rm.txt [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7892471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7892471