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Comment by gmac | Hacker News Reader

That's kind of scary — in that case I guess I should avoid creating a file named -rf.

Yes. There was an article linked from HN ages ago (at least a year) that went into mitigation techniques for these issues. As you expect, it basically became fractal, and even then still had bugs. I wish I still had the URL.

I think it may be more scary for code that allows arbitrary execution using command-line arguments. Commands like find or xargs using without defense against this would be a problem. For example, site that does something precious with your uploaded pet pictures.

Defending against this being the use of -- to signal an end of command line arguments.

That is really interesting.

Can someone knowledgeable about the shell expand on this? I don't dare test it on my machine.

Shell session to demonstrate (DO NOT DO IT IN THE DIRECTORY WITH IMPORTANT FILES):

  $ touch important
  $ chmod 400 important
  $ rm *
  override r--------  vbezhenar/staff for important? n
  $ touch -- -rf
  $ ls -l
  total 0
  -rw-r--r--  1 vbezhenar  staff  0 Mar 24 14:35 -rf
  -r--------  1 vbezhenar  staff  0 Mar 24 14:35 important
  $ rm *
  $ ls -l
  total 0
  -rw-r--r--  1 vbezhenar  staff  0 Mar 24 14:35 -rf
  $ rm -- -rf

I've not tested it, but it should expand just like anything else. The effect would broadly be that running "rm *" in the directory would recurse into subfolders without warning.

Re testing. If you follow this link - https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=3fc9a5a35c52 - you get $10 free credit (affiliate link I get $25 if you spend that much in future) on DigitalOcean.

You can spin up a droplet and use the online shell tool or ssh in (very easy when you've set up a cert as the droplet can have the cert setup automatically).

Then you can mess about with a droplet as much as you like, virtually speaking. Once you're done then use the control panel to destroy the droplet - it costs a few ¢ a day and if you don't have a droplet in use (which means active or paused; preserving images is cheaper but non-zero) then you don't pay anything.

Basically sign up and have a year of uptime to mess with a full install of various OS with no charge.

Make sure you don't write "rm -rf /*" in the wrong terminal!

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