Internet2.11.2015

Arch Linux install on Twitch gets hijacked by Gentoo botnet

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A group which calls itself Twitch in the Shell embarked on a mission to crowdsource the installation of Arch Linux on a virtual machine.

The installation would be live streamed and viewers would be able to vote on which character to type in a terminal window.

Every ten seconds, the character with the highest votes would get typed.

Much trolling was predicted for this experiment, with naysayers predicting geek comedians would organise a way to type “rm -rf /“, wiping the machine’s drive.

What ended up happening was that an enterprising hacker recruited a botnet to hijack the Twitch in the Shell chat, and managed to partially install Gentoo.

Arch Linux and Gentoo are both distributions of the GNU/Linux operating system, with Gentoo considered a rival of Arch Linux.

According to a report on Slashdot, the Twitch in the Shell community thwarted the botnet and was in the process of reinstalling Arch Linux.

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