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Linux Computer Hacked By Hitting The Backspace



If you're trying to steal someone's files from his or her computer, getting past the login screen can be hard, if not impossible. But thanks to a bizarre bug in several distributions of Linux, all you need is to hit the backspace key 28 times.




Linux Computer Hacked By Hitting The Backspace




Two security researchers from the Cybersecurity Group at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) in Spain found that it's possible to bypass any kind of authentication and take control of a locked-down computer that runs Linux just by hitting the backspace 28 times. The bug is in Grub2, the bootloader used to initialize "most Linux systems," according to the researchers, who published their research on Tuesday.


The researchers found that hitting the backspace 28 times causes an error in the systems' memory that launches the rescue function. The researchers found that hitting the backspace 28 times, and only 28 times, returned the value needed to trigger the error. Marco told Motherboard that they studied the code underlying the bootloader and "concluded the number of backspaces hits was the only input controllable by the user to cause different manifestations of the error."


If you use Bash, you can hit: Esc ' Up Arrow and Esc ' Down Arrow toscroll through Bash's history buffer. Other keys work as well: tryEsc ' ^A to go to beginning of line or Esc ' ^E to go to end of line.Unfortunately JOE only emulates a dumb terminal, so you have to use a lot ofimagination to do any editing beyond hitting backspace.


The Backspace key moved down a row to be above the Enter key. This change is my favorite change. Having a small reach, normally my hands have to leave home row to hit backspace. but on a UNIX board I have no issue hitting it with my pinky with the rest of my fingers remaining firmly on home row.


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