The Cat Command: A Hacker's Tool

The cat command once helped hackers break into systems. Back in the early Unix days,

'cat' wasn't just for reading files. Hackers found you could type: 'cat greater-than slash

dev slash tty'. This could take over someone else's terminal on the same server.

They could 'cat' text straight into another user's screen. Spam terminals, fake system messages,

or inject harmful commands. All this power, just by using the 'cat' command.

Admins changed system permissions to stop these early 'cat attacks'.