2958: Hatchery

|< < Prev Comic #2958 (July 12, 2024) Next > >|

Hatchery

Title text: Anadromous fish are more vulnerable in rivers, since the lack of salt means you can quickly crack passwords using rainbow trout tables.

Explanation

Remote code execution is a type of software exploit that takes advantage of a bug to allow a remote user of a computer application to make it run code that it was not intended to execute. For example, a webserver with such a bug might allow a user of a web page to make it run a program that deletes system files or displays private information.

The joke arising from this comic is that if you remove the "e" from "code", you get "remote cod execution". This refers to killing ("executing") codfish remotely, using an exploit in a network application that allows one to view and interact with the hatchery.

The title text contains a pun on rainbow tables, referring to rainbow trout, one type of which (steelhead) is anadromous (migrating up rivers to spawn -- salmon are another well known example). Rainbow tables are used when trying to crack hashed passwords; these are files with a carefully pre-computed selection of passwords and their corresponding hash values, which can be used to more efficiently recover passwords that are provided only in their hashed form. To prevent rainbow tables from being usable in this way, most modern password systems use "salt" — an extra random string that gets appended to the password before hashing so the same password will potentially have many different hashes, and it becomes infeasible to recover it even with the acceleration offered by rainbow tables. An additional pun is that rivers contain fresh water, so there's no salt (the chemical kind) and the fish are therefore more vulnerable.

The comic dialogue itself starts the whole chain of puns off by using the phrase "shooting fish in a barrel", which is figuratively used to mean that the task is extremely easy, but here becomes clear that he is literally executing fish, without needing to be there in person. Also, Black Hat has previously talked about shooting "lonely, angsty fish in a barrel."

It might also be a pun referencing Call of Duty, as the game's acronym is "COD" and Black Hat is seen shooting something on a computer with a "Blam!". In this sense, "remote COD execution" could refer to running Call of Duty on the fish hatchery's computer equipment remotely, though this would then not make this scenario particularly reliant upon anything fish-related, rendering the rest of the puns less explicable.

fish is also the name of a UNIX shell. Shells are popular targets for computer hackers as they are capable of being used to run arbitrary commands if sufficient access is gained through them.

Transcript

[Black Hat is sitting in an office chair at a computer desk, typing on the keyboard while looking at the screen. Cueball is standing behind him. From a star burst on the top of the screen a line goes up to a sound coming from the computer.]

Black Hat: Shooting fish in a barrel.

Computer: Blam!

[Caption below the panel:]

A new fish hatchery exploit allows remote cod execution.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

Aren't hatcheries usually about breeding fish, not farming them?RadiantRainwing (talk) 23:26, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Well farming sheep often involves the lambing process (though you can just buy in fresh surplus tups every year, from wherever happens to suit your price/quality thresholds, if that's your thing), so "farming" is a wide application in terms of animal husbandry (as well as agriculture, though perhaps in some arboriculture/horticulture/viniculture situations you needn't do the initial seeding, and just buy in the juvenile plants).

Open-water "Fish-farms" may be more likely to get their fry/big-enough-to-keep-netted-youngsters from an 'on-shore' breeding facility that may be a separate supplier, but I'd probably accept the description of the breeding facility (in 'barrels', quite possibly) as 'farming', even if it's not a full-lifetime aquaponics setup, just had mysteriously internet-accessible firearms trained upon the various tanks of growing fish. 172.70.163.120 10:42, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Comic does not say "farm" anywhere? PRR (talk) 20:53, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Although it's missing a trick by not doing so — would have given the opportunity for a further fish farm/server farm pun.172.69.195.63 08:28, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Reading it, I first thought it was about Call of Duty, an fps game series. Its usual abbreviation is COD, but this might be coincidence.Intara (talk) 01:44, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

As funny as that is, it is almost certainly coincidence. An incredible, hilarious one to be sure, but still most likely a coincidence.OmniDoom (talk) 06:50, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I noticed 792 also features Black Hat, is about hacking and mentions CoD4 tournaments, but I guess it isn't part of this comic's joke. Asdf (talk) 08:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I actually think the 'CoD' connection might be something. A hatchery is (amongst other things) where fish spawn. Someone sitting at a computer remotely executing cod as they spawn definitely feels like it might be some kind of 'spawn camping' joke. Also he mentions shooting and there's a 'blam' sound effect. Both of which I don't think fit that well with the pure cod/code pun, but make more sense if it's partially a reference to killing helpless players in an FPS as they first spawn. It feels intentional to me, but also very awkward, so I suspect I'm missing something. 172.69.43.226 12:40, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I recall a "remote controlled gun" from elsewhere in the xkcd canon. Can't immedaitely find it (was it somewhere in a What-If/off the usual numbered comics?) but eveything in this ones scenario screams at "actual gun (in a fish-farm) being controlled via a monitor". I'll have to use a bit better Google-Fu and discover which precise prior art I'm actually thinking of, out of the nearly (or slightly over, depending upon what I include) 3000 possibilities.

And I rather think that if this was a pun (even partially a pun) on Call Of Duty, there'd be a few more actually direct references to this than merely "something you do on a computer". 172.70.90.144 17:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Maybe originally there was meant to be a more obvious CoD connection, but it was dropped to make the cod(fish)/code pun(s) smoother? I'm not sure. Still, the title text seems to not reference CoD. Asdf (talk) 17:26, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I just want to observe that despite Randall's convention for using all-caps in his comics, in the above-referenced CoD 792 comic, he does stylize that specific abbreviation with a lower-case "o". He doesn't do that here. L-Space Traveler (talk) 17:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I assumed this comic's cod/code pun wouldn't be as effective if it used a lowercase "o". Even if the comic also references Call of Duty, I think using all-caps "COD" here is still understandable. Asdf (talk) 18:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if this is also inspired by the fish doorbell set up so that users watching a webcam of a river lock can see when a fish is waiting and press a button to open the lock so the fish can continue swimming upstream to spawn. The title "hatchery" doesn't quite match but doesn't seem that far off. --Zeborah

I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I'm glad you put the reference here - I've never heard of it before, and it's awesome! L-Space Traveler (talk) 17:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Is the fish shell daemon-spawn? Asking for a friend. 172.69.65.189 19:16, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

That depends. Is init considered a daemon? 172.71.30.101 13:12, 17 July 2024 (UTC)