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Damn Vulnerable Linux — Most Vulnerable Linux Ever

Posted by timothy on from the in-context-it's-barely-vulgar dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Usually, when installing a new operating system, the hope is that it's as up-to-date as possible. After installation there's bound to be a few updates required, but no more than a few megabytes. Damn Vulnerable Linux is different; it's shipped in as vulnerable a state as possible. As the DVL website explains: 'Damn Vulnerable Linux (DVL) is everything a good Linux distribution isn't. Its developers have spent hours stuffing it with broken, ill-configured, outdated, and exploitable software that makes it vulnerable to attacks. DVL isn't built to run on your desktop – it's a learning tool for security students.'"

3 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. what about a weird-arch linux? by keeboo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Something philosophically similar which could be created is some sort of "weird arch" Linux for code debugging purpuses.
    Like something with 16bit chars and ints, non-0 NULLs... Perhaps running under an emulated invented weird architecture with strange byte order (non-LSB/MSB) and weird alignment issues.
    I wonder how many software would break.

    1. Re:what about a weird-arch linux? by sconeu · · Score: 4, Interesting

      architecture with strange byte order (non-LSB/MSB)

      You mean like the PDP-11?

      0x11223344 was stored in memory as 0x33 0x44 0x11 0x22

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  2. Re:Or by Co0Ps · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously, I once attempted to see how long it would take to get a fresh install of XP hijacked on a virtual box. After about one hour of bad IE6 surfing on suspicious sites (would you like to download and run this? yes please) I had one or two pieces of malware installed that had taken over the computer completely, filling the screen with popups and disabling all kinds of system configuration tools.