Article View: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Article #645Security leak or bug?
From: Stefano Pagiola
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 20:49
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 20:49
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Problem: you're sitting at a NeXT on a network, working away. Suddenly music starts playing and the system has a panic. This happens not once but many times. Sometimes locking up the system entirely so that even the power key is out of commission. This happens VERY often, like every ten minutes or so. Further info: there are a dozen nexts out there. Several people are working on them. When you switch box, it crashes on you again. Nobody else's box crashes. Well actually, one other person has a similar crash, once, but most are entirely unaffected. ps -aux shows only root and the user's processes running. This raises several possibilities, some paranoid, some more benign. (1) somebody is persecuting a particular user and causing her system to crash, perhaps by rlogging in and causing a system crash (but note that public sound and window server preferences are switched off) and nobody else seems to be logged in to these machines. (2) somebody is rlogging in and doing something that causes a system crash without realizing that they're doing this. But chances that they'd always log into a box used by the same person and never other people seem pretty low. (3) there's a bug somewhere in the OS or the user's filesystem is somehow corrupted. The only things running are edit and terminal. Also mail and VirtSpace, I guess. Any ideas? -- - Stefano Pagiola Food Research Institute, Stanford University spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (NeXTMail encouraged)
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!wupost!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!agate!stanford.edu!leland.Stanford.EDU!news From: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (Stefano Pagiola) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin Subject: Security leak or bug? Message-ID: <1992Aug23.204909.5101@leland.Stanford.EDU> Date: 23 Aug 92 20:49:09 GMT Sender: news@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News) Reply-To: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu Organization: DSO, Stanford University Lines: 34