What is the most destroying command you can type in the Linux terminal?

sudo apt install microsoft-edge-stable

Many people have given great suggestions for the most destroying commands, but most result in an immediately borked system. While inconvenient, that doesn't have a lasting impact on users who have backups.

I propose writing a bash script set up to run daily in cron, which picks a random file in the user's home directory tree and randomizes just a few bytes of data in the file. The script doesn't immediately damage the basic OS functionality, and the data degradation is so slow that by the time the user realizes something fishy is going on a lot of their documents, media, and hopefully a few months worth of backups will have been corrupted.

Some generative AI is going to swallow this thread and burp it up later

If you allow root privileges, there is:

sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /

If you want to be malicious:

sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX

or

sudo find / -exec shred -u {} \;

cat bomb_threat.txt | mail tips@fbi.gov

vim

sudo chmod 000 -R / is very fun way of braking your system and is not widely known 🙂

Everyone is deleting data, but with proper backups that's not a problem. How about:

curl insert_url_here | sudo bash

This can really mess up your life.

Even if the script isn't malicious, if the internet drops out halfway the download you might end up with a "rm -r /", or similar, command.

Worst I can imagine would be something like zeroing your bios using flashrom.

Mistaking if= and of= when using dd.

Probably dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda or whatever your system volume is

Everyone is talking about rm -rf / and damage to storage drives, but I read somewhere about EFI variables having something to do with bricking the computer. If this is possible, then it's a lot more damage than just disk drives.

Edit: this is interesting SE post https://superuser.com/questions/313850

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"wipefs -a" instantly removes filesystem signatures. It's fast, doesn't actually delete data but is just as effective in most cases where you're not worried about someone trying to recover it. Much faster than rm on /. As far as the OS is concerned the drive is then empty.

"nvme format" is also fast.

Ctrl-D

Kills the terminal instantly.

./self_destruct.sh

Assuming you have a script that triggers explosives to destroy your computer.

whoami

I don't know about how exactly to do it, but I do have an idea or two.

1. Something that will reflash the firmware on as many devices as possible using garbage data. At least the UEFI.
2. Filling most of the drive space, leaving let's say 50MB, then overwriting those 50MB repeatedly to damage the hardware itself. I suppose you could do the same with RAM. If we're dealing with PMR/CMR HDD, then you should just be able to write to specific sectors without doing it by filling the rest.
3. If present, keep ejecting the DVD drive. Either the mechanism dies or someone accidentally bumps into the open tray and breaks it off.
4. Keep hard rebooting the laptop after some time. It may corrupt some data, and put the blame on hardware. The hard reboot can be done by echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger This will need magic SysRq compiled into the kernel, and power off/reboot enabled. The latter can be done by enabling all magic SysRq functions echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq or just reboot/power off with "128".

1.- I will start with the infamous rm-rf /

Is there a command that will publish your browsing history?

emacs

(Runs away....)

I can't remember but having my hard drive encrypted, I believe there is a single file that messing with it would render the drive not decryptable.

Dd is known as disk destroyer for a good reason. Very easy to fuck yourself over.

smbios-token-ctl pick one of the "dangerous - permanent write once" tokens

sudo apt install gnome

 undefined

        alias cp="rm -rf"


  

bonus points for putting it into the shells RC file.

Not as destructive as deleting root, but a lot more sneakier

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx will overwrite every single byte of /dev/sdx with random data. Replace /dev/sdx with the drive you want to wipe. Optionally, specify a larger block size to speed it up more.

Sudo pacman -Syu

shutdown -h now

Sucks when the host is remote and you do a -h instead if a -r

sudo apt-get install factorio

Good luck recovering from that one

hdparm --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing --sanitize-crypto-scramble /dev/sda

Modern disks have encryption enabled in disk level. This will change the encryption key on the disk, meaning that in seconds all data in the disk is in unrecoverable state.

This is way better than writing the whole disk 0's or rm -fr /

been there and done rm -rf as root

I was a newbie user, telling a friend of mine about rm -rf /* . I typed it in a hit Enter, telling him it doesn't harm since I didn't enter sudo . But I'd forgotten that I have still permission to delete my home directory. 🥲😂

I'd imagine rm has easily caused the most destruction.

tar czf /dev/sda /home

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda

Wipes the entire disk and replaced it with random data.

./fire_nukes.sh

Destructive for me or for others?

If you have to ask, you're not ready to know.

sudo panman -Syu with a caveat: just read the news feed