Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys

Re:Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys by herpderperator on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @04:22AM (#25844324)

In middle school long ago, I was using one of the library search computers. They ran Windows XP and were locked down to the point where you couldn't open anything except the software that was running and you had no access to the desktop. One day I was rapidly mashing the "Search" button in the native book-searching software they were using - for no reason at all - and it suddenly opened an Explorer window out of nowhere showing everything in the filesystem. I could reproduce it easily with rapid-enough clicks. I still have no idea why that happened.

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Re:Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys by jorvi on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @05:19AM (#25844655)

This reminds me of the classic XP login screen bypass by opening the help dialog, then the print dialog, then searching for a file to open for printing, and then executing 'explorer.exe' (I might be misremembering, this is quite a while ago).

I also remember figuring out how to share my USB key as a network drive to other users. Many fun middays were had blasting around in Halo or Soldier of Fortune II with like 10 friends, although less fun was had when our school's sysadmin found some lingering cache files that were owned by my id.

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Re:Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys by Haemm0r on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @04:57AM (#25844527)

Classic thing was to write file:///C:\ (or something similar, I do not remember it anymore) on computers with only kiosk mode IE on them to access the local file system. :)

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Re:Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys by michaelcampbell on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @08:14AM (#25846006)

In the early web days, I had a public facing web site with a link that said "I can see what's on your computer", and the href was essentially what you posted.

The number of emails I got from that was worth the vitriol contained in them, including threatened lawsuits.

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Re:Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys by mhh__ on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @05:54AM (#25844890)

Also powershell was usually unbanned in my experience even if the policy disabled cmd

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Re:Kids find a security flaw in Linux Mint by mashing keys by Hoboburger on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @10:42AM (#25847718)

Oh man this brings back so much nostalgia for the old school computer exploits we used to find.

Only approved programs software was supposed to run but you could actually run anything as long as the .exe was on the desktop.

7-zip would let you explore the entire network drive, including teachers folders that we didn't have access to.

Unplugging the reconnecting the Ethernet cable wouldn't reconnect you to the teachers monitoring software.

We had a zip filled with games like Starcraft 2, Quake 3, Halo CE that was hidden on the shared network drive that kids around the school would use to play and LAN with each other.

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