[news.sysadmin] Crashing your own machine

weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (11/11/88)

In article <2210005@acf3.NYU.EDU>, rosenblg@acf3 (Gary J. Rosenblum) writes:
>On another note, today I found a student running this wonderful
>little ditty, which he named oddly enough virus.c:

>	main() { while (1) fork (); }

>and he effectively halted a small vax (11/750).

What's the point?  This is all internal to one machine, and the idea
presumably is that every site polices its own users.  Colleges toler-
ate nonsense more than companies, and the users know it.

In contrast, the Morris worm was that someone you CAN'T get at managed
to bring your machine to a halt.  (Notice how many people WANT to get
at him?)

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720

rang@cpsin3.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang) (11/12/88)

In article <16845@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, weemba writes:
>In article <2210005@acf3.NYU.EDU>, rosenblg@acf3 (Gary J. Rosenblum) writes:
>>On another note, today I found a student running this wonderful
>>little ditty, which he named oddly enough virus.c:

>>	main() { while (1) fork (); }

>>and he effectively halted a small vax (11/750).

>What's the point?  This is all internal to one machine, and the idea
>presumably is that every site polices its own users.  Colleges toler-
>ate nonsense more than companies, and the users know it.

  Something else to be noted here is that many implementations of UNIX
allow this to be restricted (under SunOS, by setting MAXUPRC in the
kernel).  Disk and process quotas are there for a reason: use them!

+---------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | "UNIX: Just Say No!"   | "Do worry...be SAD!" |
| Michigan State University | rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu |                      |
+---------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+