9 Apr
2018
9 Apr
'18
6:18 a.m.
A nerdy group on an Aussie list are discussing old Unix cracks, and the
infamous "SPL 0" brick-that-box came up. I first saw it in ";login:"
(I
think), and, err, tried it (as did others)...
Can anyone reproduce the code? It went something like:
[ SPL 0 ]
I only did that once (and you should've heard what he said to me)...
I'm still trying to find the source for it (it was published in a
";login:" journal) to see if SIMH is vulnerable.
The concept was simple enough - fill your entire memory space with an uninterruptible
instruction. It would have gone something like:
opc = 000230 ; 000230 is the opcode for SPL 0
sys brk, -1 ; or whatever value got you all 64k of address space
mov #place, sp
jmp place
. = opc - 2 ; the -2 is to allow for the PC increment on an instruction fetch,
which I believe happens before any execution
place:
jsr pc, -(pc)
Ring any bells, anyone?
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."