I used to make jokes to juniors/interns like the above. Then I watched a junior start typing my joke in terminal, and I freaked out and stopped.
Sometimes I forget these jokes go over the heads of people.
Same. I was working on a help desk years ago helping another agent with a call where the customer was being ignorant and I sent him a message that said something like “does he want us to wipe his ass for him too?” (Not that exactly but in the context of the situation it would have been similarly insulting). Next reply I get from the other agent was “he said no”.
😬
And this is exactly why I don’t make those jokes to people unless I know very well they’ll get it
I’ve seen frustrated senior start writing this. Sometimes it’s just a different state of mind that pushes us over critical thinking edge into the void.
Did they execute the command on localhost or the remote? Because hey if they had privileges to root-nuke the target that’s gotta count for something right? Lmao
The way this reads I think the company did not actually provide a good sandboxed environemt. So when they
rm -rf /
'd the thing they actually deleted a lot of stuff the recruiters still needed (likely the pentest environments for other candidates). Because imo that’s the only reason I can think of to just outright ban a candidate from applying for any other role at the company.You should ban anyone who tries this regardless of the outcome. There is always a small chance they did it on purpose trying to cause damage. There is no benefit by giving them another chance, you just riks giving them the possibility of doing more damage. If the thing was a mistake, the person will learn from it and find another job.
If the task would have been to find general security risks this would have counted. I mean, he did some serious harm, but he was able to find a security issue.
I think there is kind of an assumption that the scenario is “outside host gains privileged access” so there’s not really a security issue with some attacker deleting root on their own box.
If it has been done properly you’re right. If this also affected the host machine it is a security issue.
I love when cheaters fail to prosper.
Back when I still used Reddit, so many posts were just CS students trying to get other Redditors to do their homework for them. I don’t think I ever came across any technical interview cheaters, but I’m sure there were some.
What would happen to him if he where to miraculously pass the interview?
Months 1-3: hey he’s new, just getting used to things
Months 4-6: he’s not good, but maybe trainable?
Months 7-9: he needs to be on a PIP so we can CYA and fire him
Months 10-12: phase out and fire
Rinse and repeat at new companies every year for 5 years, get hired as Engineering Manager at sixth job.
Before you become a master you must make one thousand mistakes; some people choose to make the same ten mistakes a hundred times each
How are you supposed to fine 7 vulernabilities in an hour anyways? No way they expect the applicant to actually find vulernabilities right? So you need to memorize a bunch and see if they are present, which doesn’t achieve anything other than testing your memorization abilities
How are you supposed to fine 7 vulernabilities in an hour anyways?
Threaten the interviewer with a knife until they give you at least 7 vulnerabilities. tapsheadmeme
Once again proving social engineering is king.
The biggest vulnerability is the user.
That being said, click this link to make an easy thousand dollars a day.