A friend of mine and I were recently in an Apple Server class. In the course of the class every student is required to set up their server and client using the same username and password. With this little bit of information, the username and password, you can wreak havoc (in a non-destructive way) on your friends computer.
Open Terminal. Just about everything you need to be able to do is from within terminal. The commands are as simple as copying and pasting.
First, SSH into that person’s computer using their sharing name or IP address.
We’re not going to cover how to SSH, it’s very easy, and Google is your friend.
Fun with Sound
sudo osascript -e "set volume 100"
Speech and beeps are made even better with the volume at 100%! So turn that volume up and make them beep and speak!
Fun with Speech
sudo osascript -e 'say "Assistant to the Regional Manager" using "Zarvox"'
Of course this is only funny if you know Dwight Schrute. Creativity is crucial with the speech commands.
Fun with Applications
sudo open /Applications/*
This is my favorite. This command will open every application in the remote users /Applications folder. Pretty funny watching the dock go crazy up and down. For a sample you can try it on your own computer.
Fun with Power
sudo osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to sleep'
This will force the computer into sleep mode immediately. Combine this with a Speech of “You’ve been owned” for the win.
Fun with a combination of commands
I know my favorite is to open all applications at once, but this is a close second. You’ll want to run these commands about 1 second apart.
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to display dialog "System Error 0x0FE: Radiation leak detected. Computer will self destruct in 10 seconds"'
The copy and paste this 10 times, one second apart:
sudo osascript -e "beep"
Not so fun
rm -rf /
Warning!: This command will remove every file on the hard drive. Not so funny on a remote computer. Especially funny for me if you’ve SSH’ed into 127.0.0.1. Keep in mind, this will in fact delete every file on your computer. You’ve been warned!
There you have it. Now all you need is that admin password…
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Discerptor
Alex Hwang
Really Nasty! April 15th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Brandon Hopkins
PleanBean
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April 15th, 2008 at 11:48 pmKenta Hood
Discerptor
Brad Jasper
There are couple reasons I don't see a problem here.
First and foremost, security through obscurity is no way to handle security at all. Relying on virus makers to not find out information that can exploit your system is a waiting time-bomb for disaster.
Second, I'm willing to bet anybody that has the ability to make a virus already knows all these commands and many more. To make a virus for a Mac you would have to find a remote exploit. As long as you keep your system up-to-date, you should be safe.
While you could potentially do some damage with "rm -rf" Brandon didn't add the "sudo" command which is required to actually perform this action. I assume he did this so users didn't unknowingly wipe their systems.
Add the fact that to run these you need the root password, and it's highly unlikely these will cause anybody any real damage.
That being said I appreciate your concern. We certainly don't want to tell people how to exploit other people's systems, but this is far from that. This squarely falls in the category of fun.
Have a great day. April 16th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Brandon Hopkins
I'm with you though, and would never suggest or post anything that was designed to destroy a system. April 16th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Anonymouse197