If it worked, the FTP bug would allow Phoenix to slip in an extra
command during the FTP login process. That command would force Spaf's
machine to allow Phoenix to login as anyone he wanted--and what he
wanted was to login as someone who had root privileges. The `root'
account might be a little obvious
if anyone was watching, and it didn't always have remote
access anyway. So he chose `daemon', another commonly root-privileged
account, instead.
It was a shot in the dark. Phoenix was fairly sure Spaf would have
secured his machine against such an obvious attack, but Electron urged
him to give it a try anyway. The FTP bug had been announced throughout
the computer security community long ago, appearing in an early issue
of Zardoz. Phoenix hesitated, but he had run out of ideas, and time.
Phoenix typed:
FTP -i uther.purdue.edu
quote user anonymous
quote cd ~daemon
quote pass anything
The few seconds it took for his commands to course from his suburban
home in Melbourne and race deep into the Midwest felt like a lifetime.
He wanted Spaf's machine, wanted Deszip, and wanted this attack to
work. If he could just get Deszip, he felt the Australians would be
unstoppable.
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