Bad Code Accidentially Wipes Out Man's Co.

Started by Dori, April 14, 2016, 10:34:22 AM

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Dori

Oh my.....how sad   :scared:

Man accidentally 'deletes his entire company' with one line of bad code

'I feel sorry to say that your company is now essentially dead,' one person on a coding forum advised Marco Marsala

By accidentally telling his computer to delete everything in his servers, hosting provider Marco Marsala has seemingly removed all trace of his company and the websites that he looks after for his customers.

The problem command was "rm -rf": a basic piece of code that will delete everything it is told to. The "rm" tells the computer to remove; the r deletes everything within a given directory; and the f stands for "force", telling the computer to ignore the usual warnings that come when deleting files.

Normally, that code would wipe out all of the specific parts of the computer that it was pointed at. But because of an error in the way it was written, the code didn't actually specify anywhere – and so removed everything on the computer.

"I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers," wrote Marco Marsala. "Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line.

Mr Marsala confirmed that the code had even deleted all of the backups that he had taken in case of catastrophe. Because the drives that were backing up the computers were mounted to it, the computer managed to wipe all of those, too.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/man-accidentally-deletes-his-entire-company-with-one-line-of-bad-code-a6984256.html
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Solar


One can only imagine the pain, especially when it's self inflicted as in this case.
I never cry, but this would probably create tears of pure frustration.

I remember when I misplaced $70K in cash, was certain I left it on the hood of the truck, but after about 10 minutes of frantic searching the hwy, I remembered I hid it in the storage area under my back seat.

Talk about panic. I can only imagine his is worse, mine wasn't permanent.
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tac


taxed

Ehhhh....... I'm inclined to call BS on this.  It's WAY more plausible that this was intentional.
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Hoofer

Quote from: taxed on April 14, 2016, 12:19:22 PM
Ehhhh....... I'm inclined to call BS on this.  It's WAY more plausible that this was intentional.

Yup!  BS on this.
I've lost hours and hours of coding to flickers in power - one of those coding sessions where it's all just falling into place, gotta key it all in, etc,. and just before I saved it, the lights blink, and the PC rebooted.

But... loosing everything, including backups?   doubtful.
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taxed

Quote from: Hoofer on April 14, 2016, 02:29:56 PM
Yup!  BS on this.
I've lost hours and hours of coding to flickers in power - one of those coding sessions where it's all just falling into place, gotta key it all in, etc,. and just before I saved it, the lights blink, and the PC rebooted.

But... loosing everything, including backups?   doubtful.

...and, this wouldn't have been in code.  No coder on the planet would have put this in their code, and if they wanted to wipe a directory, they would have used a library that's part of language they're using instead of making a system() call, or whatever the C equivalent would be for the language, that they would have had to do to run "rm -rf".  This would have been a shell script or something, and even then, no sys admin would ever put this in their script.  Even if they did, the script would have to have run under root to do catastrophic damage (which I guess could have been run from cron, which would be really stupid).  Then, even if this person WAS stupid enough to do this, it was either criminal, where they intended to do it, OR the hiring manager should be liable, because you would never task someone this incompetent to manage your systems.  Somehow, this guy fell through the vetting process if this really was the case.  Plus, the files probably could still be recovered, which would have been the first thing the other IT guys would have tried.  And, who keeps backups on this system like this?

It screams sabotage to me, and this guy would be guilty until proven innocent.

It would be like giving a 5 year old a nail gun on a construction site.  Then the owner comes by and the kid shoots his eye out with the gun.  In the end, it was the owner's fault for hiring someone stupid enough to give a 5 year old a nail gun.
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Hoofer

Yep, I was thinking of how you could possibly delete everything, unless it was run from the ROOT directory, and even then, I don't have a clue how you could delete the OS and all.  Lois Learner?
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taxed

Quote from: Hoofer on April 14, 2016, 03:14:25 PM
Yep, I was thinking of how you could possibly delete everything, unless it was run from the ROOT directory, and even then, I don't have a clue how you could delete the OS and all.  Lois Learner?

Without being familiar with this case, I'd say it was sabotage, and the fact I've seen the story out there in a few places says he wants the customers to be pissed at the owner/management for hiring someone who would allow this, or offer a service that was vulnerable to this.  A double wammy!
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daidalos

Quote from: tac on April 14, 2016, 10:54:59 AM
Hopefully he learned a lesson.
This is why when we were in school. Back when it was windows 3.1 or something like that. The rule number one they drilled into us was. Back up everything some how. Back then it was on 3.5 floppies. So I had boxes of those suckers stacked floor to ceiling.

But today, even if it means you have to have an entire separate server sitting there as a backup.

It's just good business to have a backup ready to go should something like this or worse happen.

While I feel sorry for the guy, the real pain hasn't even started yet. Because he was hosting sites, for others. If those customers were business's themselves, he'll be facing lawsuits next from angry customers who claim they've lost millions of dollars in sales.

Watch and see.
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ZQuickSilverZ

As someone who works in tech, I am interested in this story. Any updates?

taxed

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Solar

Quote from: taxed on April 30, 2016, 02:03:46 AM
Ha, I was curious to, and just found this:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-deleted-entire-company-hoax-article-1.2604511

I knew it was BS...   :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Good call.
Even the claim " viral marketing scheme" sounds like a lie.
This guy needs professional help alright, but it has nothing to do with data.
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taxed

Quote from: Solar on April 30, 2016, 06:20:23 AM
Good call.
Even the claim " viral marketing scheme" sounds like a lie.
This guy needs professional help alright, but it has nothing to do with data.

Yeah, this whole story is just odd....
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Late-For-Lunch

Quote from: taxed on April 14, 2016, 03:18:08 PM
Without being familiar with this case, I'd say it was sabotage, and the fact I've seen the story out there in a few places says he wants the customers to be pissed at the owner/management for hiring someone who would allow this, or offer a service that was vulnerable to this.  A double wammy!

Yes, it does sound suspicious as Hell. If it was intentional and that can be proven, the perpetrators could get slapped with a felony or ten. 'Wonder what REALLY happened...
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