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A somewhat easy puzzle for those familiar with Linux.

The Devil has found a way to make a Linux virus that, once executed on the right Linux machine, will break every single computer in the world permanently regardless of operating system and internet connectivity. It is evil, cannot be detected by malware scanners, survives storage media wipes, can stay in the volatile memory during cold reboots and breaks all encryption and hashing. It spreads faster than the Myspace Worm, inflicts more damage than Stuxnet does to a nuclear power plant and will share your porn habits with everyone you know. It just needs to be planted in the right computer and when Midnight on Halloween arrives, it will be unleashed.

On October 30th, the Devil's advocate breaks into the house of Linus Torvalds and copied the devil virus to his master computer, configuring it to automatically activate at Midnight on October 31st.

October 31st comes and goes, and the next day, the devil notices that there is a suspicious lack of global chaos. Linus had his computer on all night, he was even adding extra features to the kernel. Checking his Demonvision for the actions of the accountant, he realized that his advocate made a basic error when configuring the file in Linux. What went wrong?

If possible, try to answer with a small story and a technical explanation, separated by a horizontal line.

A first hint: Those that remember seeing a relatively well-known spy skulking around Puzzling.SE in May might get a clue as to the mistake the advocate made.

this question is a near-duplicate of another question in essence since it relies on the same Linux functionality, but how that functionality is used is different. I think, just like the 146 questions that are tagged as word riddles that require us to combine different words of the same type, they are different puzzles with a similar answer. I don't think they're exact duplicates, which is what the duplicate flag is about. I at least think we need to get some discussion in Meta to determine at what point something is a duplicate.

Nzall
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  • It ACTIVATES at 10pm, but is UNLEASHED at midnight? Is that correct? – Gordon K Aug 28 '15 at 14:12
  • Simple: Torvalds's master computer is not a Linux machine, thus the virus is never executed. – GentlePurpleRain Aug 28 '15 at 14:36
  • Hmm, I'm wondering if this has something to do with the Halloween Documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents – Kingrames Aug 28 '15 at 14:51
  • Nothing went wrong. He just has to wait a while - everyone's having a lie in as it's the end of Daylight Savings time. – Gordon K Aug 28 '15 at 14:55
  • Now that I see what's going on here, I think it's similar enough that it would be closed as a duplicate of the other question. – f'' Aug 28 '15 at 21:39
  • @f'' It's close to a duplicate, but not quite the same answer. It's the same error, but in a different way. The problem is: if we're going to exclude questions like that, we should take a look back at older questions. We have 27 variations on Knights and Knaves, which also all use the same concept. – Nzall Aug 28 '15 at 21:43
  • The relevant question even shows up in the "linked questions" on the sidebar :-/ – Rand al'Thor Aug 28 '15 at 21:53
  • @randal'thor I assume you know what spy I'm referring to? I based it on another question on here, and I agree that it's close to a duplicate of that other question, although the answer is somewhat different. – Nzall Aug 28 '15 at 21:55
  • @randal'thor Really? it doesn't on my end. I only see 2 related questions, but no linked questions. – Nzall Aug 28 '15 at 21:56
  • Oops, I meant "related questions". Too late to edit... – Rand al'Thor Aug 28 '15 at 21:59
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    Being the devil, he set the permissions to 666? That would render the virus unexecutable. – dramzy Aug 29 '15 at 01:14
  • @RespectMyAuthoritah Yes, that's the answer I was looking for. If you can put that in an answer, I can accept it. – Nzall Aug 29 '15 at 08:47
  • If the correct answer is indeed the file permissions, then I would argue that the virus has not been “installed”, but only the installer program has been copied onto the computer, which would not qualify as a virus infection (as it still requires the file to be run) nor have the properties described in the question. – Arkku Aug 29 '15 at 18:06
  • @Arkku the installer program has the correct permissions, but the virus itself doesn't have them. Also, you don't need permissions to copy files over, which is basically what I meant by installing. – Nzall Aug 29 '15 at 18:07
  • @NateKerkhofs The virus should already have infected any number of other programs, firmware, etc if it were installed and had the properties described in the question. If it is in a file waiting to be run, it will not survive storage media wipes, stay in volatile memory, nor be undetectable to malware scanners. A computer virus is usually defined as a self-replicating program that installs itself inside other software/firmware, and a virus infection (“installation”) happens when this self-replication has taken place. I would argue that this has also not taken place if it is in a separate file. – Arkku Aug 29 '15 at 18:18
  • @Arkku It's a virus created by the devil, he has supernatural powers. If we're going as far as introducing a mythological deity into a question, we can also assume that that deity can make a single piece of software have all those properties. Thing is, he made a mistake and gave the properties to the virus, but not to the installer program that activates the virus. Once the virus is activated, it has these properties, but before it's been executed, it doesn't have these properties. – Nzall Aug 29 '15 at 19:05
  • @NateKerkhofs Yes, fully agreed, and that's my point exactly: only the installer program had been installed, not the virus… =) – Arkku Aug 29 '15 at 21:12
  • @Arkku I changed the question slightly. The virus was not installed, but copied over. Between the copying and the execution, the virus is also magically resistant to storage media wipes, volatile memory purges and malware scanners. It can however be deleted manually. However, the virus needs to be executed before it can plunge the world into chaos. I never said Linus' computer was infected by the virus. – Nzall Aug 29 '15 at 21:18
  • @NateKerkhofs To me “installing” a virus sounds equivalent to infecting the computer with it. The change in wording to “copied” fixes this problem. (The answer is still silly, but it's tagged as a joke, so.) – Arkku Aug 29 '15 at 23:34

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Linus Torvalds wasn't home at the activation time, and he shut down his computer for power-saving. When he returned later and turned on his computer, it was already behind the scheduled 10PM Oct 31st.

However, worry for next year.

Gully
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