screaming tty

2 definitions found

screaming tty - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  screaming tty
  
     [Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite number of
     random characters at the operating system.  This can happen if
     the terminal is either disconnected or connected to a
     powered-off terminal but still enabled for login;
     misconfiguration, misimplementation, or simple bad luck can
     start such a terminal screaming.  A screaming tty or two can
     seriously degrade the performance of a vanilla Unix system;
     the arriving "characters" are treated as userid/password pairs
     and tested as such.  The Unix password encryption algorithm is
     designed to be computationally intensive in order to foil
     brute-force crack attacks, so although none of the logins
     succeeds; the overhead of rejecting them all can be
     substantial.
  
     [Jargon File]
  

screaming tty - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  screaming tty
   n.
  
     [Unix] A terminal line which spews an infinite number of random
     characters at the operating system. This can happen if the terminal
  is
     either disconnected or connected to a powered-off terminal but still
     enabled for login; misconfiguration, misimplementation, or simple bad
     luck can start such a terminal screaming. A screaming tty or two can
     seriously degrade the performance of a vanilla Unix system; the
     arriving "characters" are treated as userid/password pairs and tested
     as such. The Unix password encryption algorithm is designed to be
     computationally intensive in order to foil brute-force crack attacks,
     so although none of the logins succeeds; the overhead of rejecting
     them all can be substantial.