Backup script ingested an accidental asterisk and deleted everything
A 21-year-old programmer named Miller accidentally deleted all data while running a cleanup script on a mainframe. The error occurred when an asterisk was passed instead of a specific drive letter, leading to the deletion of every file and code. This incident highlights the risks of allowing inexperienced individuals to write critical code without proper oversight.
- ▪Miller wrote a cleanup routine for a mainframe that inadvertently deleted all data due to an error in drive letter assignment.
- ▪The mistake happened when the system assigned an asterisk instead of a specific drive letter, causing the deletion command to apply to all files.
- ▪It took Miller a full day to restore the lost data, impacting 20 other employees who were unable to work during that time.
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Record
| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/storage/2026/05/18/backup-script-ingested-an-accidental-asterisk-and-deleted-everything/5240173 |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 08:30:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T06:34:56.099Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T06:34:56.099Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | FahdNRoDknaV |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); Storage Backup script ingested an accidental asterisk and deleted everything Letting a 21-year-old write critical code without supervision is not smart Simon Sharwood Simon Sharwood APAC Editor Published mon 18 May 2026 // 07:30 UTC WHO, ME? Welcome to Monday morning, the time of week when The Register always asks “Who, Me?” because that’s the title of our reader-contributed column in which you confess to having made a mess, and found a way to egress without career distress.This week,…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Register.
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