Very Computer

 I'm on a Sun 4/390 running SunOS 4.0.3. Earlier this morning, I
began to notice some peculiarities on the system which eventually
led me to type in the command 'whoami'. The response was the terse
reply, 'Intruder alert.'.

 It turns out a priveledged 'somebody' in the lab had copied a file
over /etc/passwd. Fortunately, we keep a current copy online, so no
great damage was done.

 But now I'm curious about where this message originates from. I did
a 'strings' on /usr/ucb/whoami, /usr/etc/inetd, and everything in
/usr/lib, but couldn't find it.

 Does anybody know the orgins and background of this message? I'm
considering suing somebody over all the coffee I spilled on my
shirt.  :(          

(just joking, please, no lawyers...)

glenn

Quote:> I'm on a Sun 4/390 running SunOS 4.0.3. Earlier this morning, I
>began to notice some peculiarities on the system which eventually
>led me to type in the command 'whoami'. The response was the terse
>reply, 'Intruder alert.'.

> But now I'm curious about where this message originates from. I did
>a 'strings' on /usr/ucb/whoami, /usr/etc/inetd, and everything in
>/usr/lib, but couldn't find it.

The new releases (> SunOS 4.1) have a more sane message,
"whoami: no login associated with uid %u".

        -Kartik

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Quote:>Scary, isn't it? :-) You have to say "strings - /usr/ucb/whoami" on SunOS
>4.0.x to reveal it, but it's there all right.

But hey, that's nothing...

We have a cluster here of 21 Apollo DN3500/DN4500..

This cluster is maintained by volunteer staffers.  These staffers sometimes
have a twisted sense of humor...

Like,

If your registry entry (like your password line) is unavailable, some
programs will barf and say "You don't exist.  Go Away."

The standard program we had for turning off accounts (it would look in the
person's home directory, and cat .sorry) checked whether it could actually
read the .sorry file.  If it could not, it would say "Technical
Difficulties.  Go Away."

Friendly, aren't we? :-)

Quote:>This cluster is maintained by volunteer staffers.  These staffers sometimes
>have a twisted sense of humor...

>Like,

>If your registry entry (like your password line) is unavailable, some
>programs will barf and say "You don't exist.  Go Away."

-tms

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From the Lab of the MaD ScIenTiST: