Botnet Takes Over Twitch Install and Partially Installs Gentoo

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.

Comments

I can't be the only one who saw this coming...

[damn_registrars]

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).

Re:I can't be the only one who saw this coming...

[stephanruby]

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.

I'm torn on this.

[MAXOMENOS]

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

Re:I'm torn on this.

[Aighearach]

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?

Re:I'm torn on this.

[quantaman]

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.

Re:I'm torn on this.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:What language is this written in?

[blavallee]

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

Where do I find this botnet?

[whoever57]

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?

Heh heh

[cfalcon]

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

Sorry.

anyone else completely confused by the summary?

[advocate_one]

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

Re:anyone else completely confused by the summary?

[fisted]

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!