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Botnet Takes Over Twitch Install and Partially Installs Gentoo

Posted by timothy on from the nerd-rage-best-kind-of-rage dept.

WarJolt writes: The plug was pulled on the attempt to crowd-source an Arch Linux install after a botnet threatened to take over the process. Twitch Installs has been rebooted by the twitchintheshell community and Twitch Installs users managed to reinstall Arch only to be thwarted by the botnet. The botnet managed to partially install Gentoo. Users are currently in the process of reinstalling Arch.

14 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. I can't be the only one who saw this coming... by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Insightful
    On Friday I suggested that it was highly likely we would see this:

    I expect some people are trying to figure out a way to install another OS on top of (or somehow in place of) Arch Linux.

    And I suspect others saw this as coming as well. I will say though, I see gentoo as being somewhat snippy and uninspired for this. I would have been really impressed had they managed to install OS X or Windows through this manner (likely the only time in my life I've said that about the latter).

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:I can't be the only one who saw this coming... by stephanruby · · Score: 4, Funny

      I would have been really impressed had they managed to install OS X or Windows through this manner.

      They probably didn't want to be classified as malicious.

    2. Re:I can't be the only one who saw this coming... by Provocateur · · Score: 2, Funny

      Luckily you can upgrade back to Windows 7

      You know we're a long long way from Mars when the future of computing technology is summarized like that, right there

      --
      WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
    3. Re:I can't be the only one who saw this coming... by damn_registrars · · Score: 2

      The problem is that it was one person with an army of bots doing what they pleased, rather than a collaborative clusterfuck like pokemon was, so nobody was having any fun except the botnet owner.

      Sure, but as I recall, it was only going to take one keystroke (including space or enter) per 10 minutes. Hence

      wget a

      would take an hour to enter. I'm surprised they got this far in so little time.

      --
      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  2. I'm torn on this. by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 3, Insightful

    On the one hand, I'm not fond of black hats. On the other, that's really, really funny.

    --
    Finding God in a Dog
    1. Re:I'm torn on this. by Aighearach · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm not convinced they are black hats. It is a normal outcome that when a random user tries to install a linux distro, they end up with a different one installed than they had first begun installing. If it is a crowd-sourced effort, who is to say which outcome is more deserving? If there was no intended range of possible outcomes, what exactly was the crowd's involvement supposed to be? If the crowd was supposed to simply replace some of the software, it is hard to call the experiment a success or failure; maybe somebody made a wrong predication about the outcome. I guess the failure was that they pulled the plug without discovering the outcome?

    2. Re:I'm torn on this. by quantaman · · Score: 4, Informative

      On the one hand, I'm not fond of black hats. On the other, that's really, really funny.

      The summary said it was a botnet, which suggests a lot of hijacked computers (and illegal unethical activity), but unless there's evidence that wasn't mentioned it could just have easily been a bunch of bots running on the person's own laptop.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    3. Re:I'm torn on this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's SchrÃdinger Linux.
      It installs both Gentoo and Arch into a superpartition.

  3. Re:What language is this written in? by blavallee · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah, it discusses a strange experiment, assuming everyone understands the details.

    Basically, it's a democratic attempt to enter commands into the CLI.
    With the end goal of installing the Arch Linux OS.

    Because the most popular command entered, wins. The experiment was hijacked by someone using a botnet, resulting in a majority.
    Nothing malicious, most likely a prank. Since the hijack was installing an alternative distro (Gentoo).

    If the organizers don't want to see something like this happen again, pehaps they should check out the Electoral College

  4. Where do I find this botnet? by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have a partial install of Gentoo that I need to work on. The first clean Gentoo install that I have done for almost a decade.

    How can I get this botnet to finish the job?

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  5. Heh heh by cfalcon · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wonder what plot will next.... emerge?

    Sorry.

  6. It's war by frup · · Score: 2

    The war of the machines has begun. It really is the year of the Linux Desktop.

  7. anyone else completely confused by the summary? by advocate_one · · Score: 3, Informative

    what the fsck is 'twitch'? Does anyone really care?

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    1. Re:anyone else completely confused by the summary? by fisted · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's basically a shitty stream provider with frequent outages and if you allow enough 3rd party javascripts and trackers, you get A Flash Based Video Player!

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      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!