Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Astalavista.com hacked, including details

astalavista.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 68 posts

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#41

Post by __david__ »

sev wrote: post #34
Confusion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offtopic, but please, don't use 'virii'. The correct plural is 'viruses'. 'Virii' is wrong for two reaons: 1) The Latin plural of word ending in -us is not -ii. -i at best. 2) 'Virus' doesn't have a Latin plural, because its meaning is like (in the sense of not having a plural) 'sand': it already denotes a multitude.

Why is it that the plural of "radius" is "radii" but the plural of "virus" is not "viri"? I don't see "virus" as inherently denoting a multitude in the dictionary. Just curious.

And furthermore "sands" is still perfectly legitimate, even though "sand" may be inherently plural (the "sands" of time, different "sands" of the world).

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#42

Post by thomaspaine »

sev wrote: post #34
Confusion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offtopic, but please, don't use 'virii'. The correct plural is 'viruses'. 'Virii' is wrong for two reaons: 1) The Latin plural of word ending in -us is not -ii. -i at best. 2) 'Virus' doesn't have a Latin plural, because its meaning is like (in the sense of not having a plural) 'sand': it already denotes a multitude.

Why is it that the plural of "radius" is "radii" but the plural of "virus" is not "viri"? I don't see "virus" as inherently denoting a multitude in the dictionary. Just curious.

Virus is Latin for poison. It's a mass noun because it denotes something uncountable (not in the strict mathematical sense, but in the how the hell do you count poison sense). As far as I know, there is no Latin plural form for virus.

Second declension singular nominative nouns end in 'us' and their plural form end in 'i', but fourth declension singular nominative nouns also end in 'us', but their plural form still end in 'us'. Also, like in every language, there are funky exceptions to these rules, like second declension singular nominative nouns which are neuter rather than masculine, but still end in 'us' rather than the normal 'um'. Moral of the story, don't assume that the plural of word ending in 'us' is 'i'.

It's also been about 8 years since I've taken Latin, so take that into consideration before someone goes all Life of Brian on me.

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#43

Post by ableal »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #17
gmazzola wrote: post #2

Page as it appeared on June 5, 2009 12:15AM EDT: http://pastebin.com/f751e9f5b The post is a little low on details concerning the actual exploit used, but there's pretty massive carnage. Let's hope the admins have offsite backups. For those who don't know of Astalavista, it was a popular website for "hackers" with relatively low-quality content. It started in 1994, and was one of the first search engines for computer…

It looks like they first buffer overflowed Litespeed to spawn a shell (which was ironically running as a user 'apache'). The http headers that are being returned from Astalavista are consistent with this theory (in addition to the obvious output of the first binary run). Apparently Litespeed has a pretty dodgy security record after doing a cursory search. Far more interesting was the root escalation exploit. 2.6.18 i…

The version string "2.6.18-128.1.10el5" is exactly what CentOS 5.3 shows (toy VM I installed last week, updated to May 31, no updates today). They may have turned off SELinux for convenience ...

[P.S. my VM is 32 bits, because VirtualBox has an issue with 64 bit CentOS 5.3 and AMD PhenomIIs: http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/3927 ]

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#44

Post by DrJokepu »

Confusion wrote: post #23
gmazzola wrote: post #2

Page as it appeared on June 5, 2009 12:15AM EDT: http://pastebin.com/f751e9f5b The post is a little low on details concerning the actual exploit used, but there's pretty massive carnage. Let's hope the admins have offsite backups. For those who don't know of Astalavista, it was a popular website for "hackers" with relatively low-quality content. It started in 1994, and was one of the first search engines for computer…

Offtopic, but please, don't use 'virii'. The correct plural is 'viruses'. 'Virii' is wrong for two reaons: 1) The Latin plural of word ending in -us is not -ii. -i at best. 2) 'Virus' doesn't have a Latin plural, because its meaning is like (in the sense of not having a plural) 'sand': it already denotes a multitude.

Being a Latin geek myself I can't help but point out that nouns in the fourth declension (u stem) also end in -us in singular and receive an -us affix in plural as well.

"Virus" is however, in the second declension (virus -i n. "slime, poison, goo") with the oddity of being neutral while having a second declension -us ending which is normally a feature of masculine nouns. And indeed, its plural would be "viri".

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#45

Post by DrJokepu »

sev wrote: post #34
Confusion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offtopic, but please, don't use 'virii'. The correct plural is 'viruses'. 'Virii' is wrong for two reaons: 1) The Latin plural of word ending in -us is not -ii. -i at best. 2) 'Virus' doesn't have a Latin plural, because its meaning is like (in the sense of not having a plural) 'sand': it already denotes a multitude.

Why is it that the plural of "radius" is "radii" but the plural of "virus" is not "viri"? I don't see "virus" as inherently denoting a multitude in the dictionary. Just curious.

Because with [radi]us the stem is "radi" but with [vir]us the stem is "vir". These words are from the same type (second declension) they both receive an -i affix in plural, hence radi + i = radii, vir + i = viri. Latin being Latin there are an awful number of exceptions but this is a somewhat general rule.

Put it like this: Grammatically speaking, the plural of virus is viri. Putting it into plural might or might not makes sense. Personally, I don't think that using plural for collections in Latin is a very big sin given that this is very common in classical Latin texts.

One example of this can be found in the famous introduction of Aeneid (I.1 "Arma virumque cano...") lines 31-32, where Virgil is using the plural form of the word "sea" (mare, plural: maria)

"multosque per annos / errabant acti fatis __maria__ omnia circum" - "for a number of years, driven by fate, wandering around on the seas"

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#46

Post by slater »

andr wrote: post #37

The hackers complain about Astalavista being targeted towards script kiddies. However, it looks like they used a prepackaged exploit, too.

i think that was the point: Astalavista is also an IT security company, yet they can't even keep themselves from being hacked in every way possible, using the simplest of prepackaged exploits available.

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#47

Post by danijel »

bdmac97 wrote: post #19
Timothee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking I was not the only one reading the title as altavista.com and I was really shocked. Thanks for the background info on the site.

I definitely read "altavista" at first too having never heard of astalavista until now.

Why do you think they called it like that? It was founded in early 90's and altavista was "the" thing. I remember going there and learning about trojans, debuggers and disassembly as a kid.

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#48

Post by gmazzola »

Confusion wrote: post #23
gmazzola wrote: post #2

Page as it appeared on June 5, 2009 12:15AM EDT: http://pastebin.com/f751e9f5b The post is a little low on details concerning the actual exploit used, but there's pretty massive carnage. Let's hope the admins have offsite backups. For those who don't know of Astalavista, it was a popular website for "hackers" with relatively low-quality content. It started in 1994, and was one of the first search engines for computer…

Offtopic, but please, don't use 'virii'. The correct plural is 'viruses'. 'Virii' is wrong for two reaons: 1) The Latin plural of word ending in -us is not -ii. -i at best. 2) 'Virus' doesn't have a Latin plural, because its meaning is like (in the sense of not having a plural) 'sand': it already denotes a multitude.

Ironically, I was very careful with my choice of "virus vs. virii" when I wrote that message. I looked up the Wikipedia article for Plural of Virus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus ), and noted the sentence "In reference to a computer virus, the plural is often believed to be virii...".

As an amateur Latin geek myself, I agree that "viruses" is proper from a grammar standpoint, but I sided with Wikipedia because I was using computer terminology.

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#49

Post by jameskpolk »

gojomo wrote: post #33

When a site is reported as 'hacked', am I alone in not wanting to visit it for a look-see? Aren't the same people who deface sites likely to try fresh browser compromises against rubberneckers?

That seems like a decent security precaution.

However, since astalavista was the site in question, you will probably be safer to visit after the hack.

Re: Astalavista.com hacked, including details

#50

Post by nopassrecover »

gmazzola wrote: post #48
Confusion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offtopic, but please, don't use 'virii'. The correct plural is 'viruses'. 'Virii' is wrong for two reaons: 1) The Latin plural of word ending in -us is not -ii. -i at best. 2) 'Virus' doesn't have a Latin plural, because its meaning is like (in the sense of not having a plural) 'sand': it already denotes a multitude.

Ironically, I was very careful with my choice of "virus vs. virii" when I wrote that message. I looked up the Wikipedia article for Plural of Virus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus ), and noted the sentence "In reference to a computer virus, the plural is often believed to be virii...". As an amateur Latin geek myself, I agree that "viruses" is proper from a grammar standpoint, but I sided with Wikipedi…

but if you read on.. "or, less commonly, viri, but both forms are neologistic folk etymology[1] and no major dictionary recognizes them as alternative forms."
Post reply on HN