IT boss left root session open for bring-your-kid-to-work day
Daddy, I typed a Unix command! Was it a bad one?
The IT boss at a company using an IBM RS/6000 Unix machine inadvertently caused significant system disruption when his young daughter played a prank during a bring-your-kid-to-work Halloween event. In the 1990s, the company's tech infrastructure was run on BASIC with aging codebases, relying on memory measured in kilobytes. The tech team, known for its family-friendly atmosphere, invited employees to bring their children to the office for Halloween trick-or-treating.
The IT boss preemptively began processing data early, chain-linking programs sequentially, and then his wife and kids arrived. To accommodate the festive occasion, the boss parked his children in his office, where their terminals were already logged in as root. The boss's nine-year-old daughter, inspired by a movie she had seen, confidently declared that she could "SHUTDOWN" the system just as it was portrayed in the film.
When the IT boss returned to his office after the event, he discovered that his daughter's unauthorized command had caused extensive damage, requiring 36 hours to rectify the system.
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Also reported by 1 other outlet
- IT boss left root session open for bring-your-kid-to-work day theregister.com
