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Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys

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Re: Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys

#3
post #2

Well, the original definition of the word "hacking". Hacking on keyboard to exploit keypress timings, key combinations and key buffer overflows.

The original definition of "hacking" was "hacking code together". Move fast and break things. There are a lot of us OG and TNG hackers here. It's kind of the SV spirit.

"Cracker" is the term used commonly - as in "crack the nut"; i.e. gain access to systems / break copy protection etc. Then you have the phone guys, the phreakers, whistling for free calls.

Re: Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys

#6
This reminds me of when I was about 14. I had a Tamagotchi which I had for a record amount of time. My niece, about 2 at the time wanted to see it so let her hold it. Within 1/2 a second, she squeezed both buttons at the same time and crashed it.

My daughter managed to buy 24 hours of football pass with NowTV by pressing the same button repeatedly on the remote within about 5 seconds.

So a crash like this doesn't surprise me.

Re: Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys

#7
Does anyone know why lockscreens in Linux have been such a joke? I remember trying Ubuntu couple years ago and when waking up my laptop it would show me my entire desktop with all the information displayed right there in the open for about 10-20 seconds before suddenly engaging the lockscreen. All you had to do was close the lid and open it again and you could just copy whatever was on the screen before the lock screen appeared. I guess it's because the lockscreen was a separate process that had to start up? Still, what an awful awful design.

Re: Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys

#8

Step 1: Gather timings of key presses from a lot of kids. 2: Use ML to learn how to simulate it. 3: Sell it as a service, labeling it KaaS. 4: Profit, then go to jail because of a misunderstanding. But seriously, is there such a tool to automate this?

Fuzzing ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzing )

Re: Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys

#10

Does anyone know why lockscreens in Linux have been such a joke? I remember trying Ubuntu couple years ago and when waking up my laptop it would show me my entire desktop with all the information displayed right there in the open for about 10-20 seconds before suddenly engaging the lockscreen. All you had to do was close the lid and open it again and you could just copy whatever was on the screen before the lock scre…

Bad design in X11 which can't be fixed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25801693

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