I remember the "reboot" bug on the HTC G1... Apparently everything you typed was...

monktastic1 · on Feb 10, 2020

Wait, how did this work? Surely not every typed word was issued as a command.

donio · on Feb 10, 2020

That was indeed the case. A better use for it was running "telnetd" which was how we got root access to the device initially.

scintill76 · on Feb 10, 2020

I think it was more like every keystroke was sent to a virtual terminal as well as the GUI, so <enter>reboot<enter> would reboot.

praptak · on Feb 10, 2020

Every typed word between two CRs.

practical_lem · on Feb 10, 2020

Source? I could understand (!) `reboot` (with backticks) evaluated by mistake inside a shell script; but still reboot needs high privileges.

ChrisClark · on Feb 10, 2020

Yeah, it ran everything you typed as root.

So open up a chat app, type return, reboot, return. Tada.

I can't find some original sources, but there is a summary I found on Slashdot. https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/08/11/08/1720246/bug-in-an...