Had to share this little gem I discovered.
Remote Desktop is a tool provided with Microsoft Windows to log in remotely to a Microsoft Windows computer. I think it is only available with Windows XP Pro.
To crash a Windows PC:
- Use SSH tunneling to connect your computer to itself. Forward the RDC port (3389) to another port.
- Use RDC to connect to the forwarded port.
That’s it. Boom, you’re looking at a black screen with a blinking text cursor. I did this on purpose a few weeks ago just to see what would happen. I don’t think you even need sshd to do this, but otherwise you’ll need two computers…
Which is what I did just a few minutes ago by mistake. RDC is so good that I often forget which computer I’m on. Today, I not only forgot, but decided I needed something on my other computer and RDC was the way to get it. I crashed both my work and home PC by creating an RDC loop. At least, this is what I think happened. Since I had to call my wife to get her to poke the Reset button on the case, I am reluctant to try to recreate it…
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe windows in windows until RDC crashed. But I didn’t think it would require a hard reset of the computer.
What can I say about Microsoft that hasn’t been said before?