/dev/null – A Funny Linux Post
I just visited the Ubuntu Forums and bumped into a post I found very amusing. It’s from an individual who believes he’s found a vulnerability in dev/null.
“…I first came upon it, when I was writing an email, and I saved the file at the location /dev/null. Upon logging in again, I found that the file has mysteriously vanished. This was very sensitive information, so I even encrypted it. But this seem like a vulnerability in the Linux kernel, that non root users have access to delete and modify /dev/null as it is the only possible explanation for my file disappearing…” Ha ha ha… Of course it’s gone! :) :D ;) Maybe you’ll all think I’m a bit crazy, but I thought it funny. Maybe I am a bit nuts! :)
For users no familiar with /dev/null, it discards all data written to it. One common use is when running a cron job, /dev/null discards the email message you would normally get. (You don’t need to be emailed the cron job response every few minutes right?)
Learn more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//dev/null
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Isn’t it a waste of resources though?
@Vadim P. – I’m not sure. I often use it so that I don’t receive a zillion email messages showing the status of the cron job. When running just one cron job every 10 minutes for example, can give you 140 (or something) email messages each day. Now let’s say I run 4 or 5… Yikes! :) Sending them to /dev/null means they get deleted. ;)
Heh, I thought it was funny so your not completely mad after all :)