So we printed the entire Linux kernel source code including my driver in 5-pt font
Please tell me you used comic sans.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Malicious Compliance
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I hope they did. Now that you mention it, it would have been an amusing twist :)
The year is 2025. A massive geomagnetic storm has fried all forms of technology, wiping out hard drives and solid-state drives alike, and scrambled all backup tapes. Coincidentally, a new plastic-eating bacterium has munched on all the compact discs without anyone noticing.
Humanity will rebuild...
The computer chip manufacturing pipeline has been restored, but there is no software to run them. In a dusty office previously owned by a lawyer from a long-defunct dotcom, a treasure trove is discovered. Five metal cabinets filled with paper: the printed Linux kernel source code, in 5-pt comic sans font. One brave soul will enter to transcribe. Mistakes are not an option. We all thank you for your sacrifice.
Final twist, nobody can compile it because it uses GCC extensions that no recovered compiler supports.
Printed in wingdings + given ascii conversion table to decypher
Doubly-devilish as it’s not fixed width. Microsoft Bob would be proud.
I stare at Linux source code very often looking for vulnerabilities.
I unironically have printed pages out to sit down with.
The idea of having the whole kernel printed… is… fun. Lol. How would your organize it for reading? Different chapters that are the directories of the kernel code ?
Why would they organize it in any way? It was not one of the requirements… so, alphabetically.
Obviously and we are talking per line and not per file are we?
I'd love to hear more about this - do you do it professionally (for preventative reasons), as a side hobby, or as an attacker for malicious/selfish reasons? No judgement, genuinely curious as it takes a certain personality type to do this kind of work and I find it really interesting.
I think they just stare at it, hoping the vulnerabilities come to them in a moment of revelation. A Linux Joseph Smith, the kernel playing the part of the Golden Plates.
The small overlap of my two largest hobbies, programming and making fun of Mormons. Perfect.
OP said this happened in Utah, so maybe so!
Professionally
My title is senior vulnerability researcher. Focus on mobile devices. That’s all I can really say without doxing too much
But the Linux kernel is always a juicy target because of the coverage and exploit there gets you.
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Legally they had been served, so there was nothing they could do about it.
Somehow I doubt this.
Maybe it's true but legally I know in California you are required to do your briefs in 12 point font. While that's briefs, I would imagine evidence would be under the same banner. It definitely WOULD be illegal to do it in 1 pt font or intentionally making it unreadable. I would imagine if the other side wanted to make it an issue they could back to the judge and he's probably have it out with you.
Maybe the lawyers wisely replaced your malicious compliance with correct sized print with out telling you, maybe the other side didn't care.
This was in Utah. I'm no lawyer. Maybe it wasn't legal. What's what our lawyer said he did.
I don't think the font size matters too much in this, it's just the printing the whole source code, including a lot of not directly relevant things, and sending all of that over in a few boxes instead of sharing the project files with them that is very malicious.
It's also very common in legal cases to share evidence printed out, instead of in digitally, to make sure it isn't easy for the other side.
So you like source code? Well then! HAVE ALL THE SOURCE CODE IN THE WORLD!
Just out of curiosity...
How many pages were there?
I don't know. I didn't do the printing. The law firm did it. But I remember our lawyer mentioning that they fedexed over 20 cartons of printing paper. Assuming 500 sheets per ream and 5 reams per carton, that would be 50,000 sheets, or 100,000 pages since it was printed on both sides to be even more annoying.
That's beautiful. Simply beautiful.
Damn. Did they ever find your actual source code in there
No idea. That company folded before it could even respond. It was a typical dot-com with a completely ridiculous business model. That's why our lawyer decided to fight the suit: he figured they'd collapse soon anyway, so we might as well milk the lawsuit for the publicity.
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You’re the hero that GitHub needs.
The irony is that nowadays you could just say "well, the codes open source and all hosted on GitHub..."
Double irony is they'd also send a takedown to github claiming the code contains their IP due to being too ignorant to comprehend that none of the code contains any of thiers to do what it does
Wikipedia has XOR truth tables and contains my very secret trade secrets!
I was a tech journalist in the early 00's and I remember writing about that story or one like that.
A similar thing happened with Microsoft, who either delivered or was served the full documentation of some office format printed out. It's a pretty popular form of malicious compliance, also paying people in bags of coins.
Please tell me all the newlines were removed from the source code and it was minified to save paper.
Oh man, if you gave a programmer minified C code with no comments, whitespace, or newlines in printed paper, they'd probably charge more than your lawyer to read that shit.
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Amazing! What a great story.
Legally they had been served, so there was nothing they could do about it.
Pretty sure the can go to the judge and as you to deliver the information in a more friendly format.
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Should have sent it xor since they already know how to decode it.
"only an xor" would pretty much imply any of most stream ciphers. It's what you xor with that matters.
Was this for the CueCat? Because it sure sounds like that! Bravo!
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