2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
|
|
|
screaming tty
|
|
|
|
|
|
2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
|
|
|
n. [Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite number of random
|
|
|
|
|
characters at the operating system. This can happen if the terminal is
|
|
|
|
|
either disconnected or connected to a powered-off terminal but still enabled
|
|
|
|
|
for login; misconfiguration, misimplementation, or simple bad luck can start
|
|
|
|
|
such a terminal screaming. A screaming tty or two can seriously degrade the
|
|
|
|
|
performance of a vanilla Unix system; the arriving characters are treated as
|
|
|
|
|
userid/password pairs and tested as such. The Unix password encryption
|
|
|
|
|
algorithm is designed to be computationally intensive in order to foil
|
|
|
|
|
brute-force crack attacks, so although none of the logins succeeds; the
|
|
|
|
|
overhead of rejecting them all can be substantial.
|
|
|
|
|
|
