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Amit Singh's Challenge: Find a Decade-Old Bug

Posted by timothy on from the older-than-the-os-that-hosts-it dept.

dreicodan writes "Well this has too many juicy Mac OS X nuggets in one bag! All details are on this page, but I'll summarise. Apparently Amit Singh discovered a 10+ year old serious bug in OS X. The bug started in Nextstep and is still in Panther (and apparently Tiger, too). Then Amit wrote a program to demo the bug, but also made the program capable of hiding what it does using some complicated Mach kernel voodo! He then threw a challenge open to OS X experts to figure out the bug. It turns out that a week and some 1000 downloads later, three brilliant hackers (Alexy Proskuryakov, Andrew Wellington, Graham Dennis) were able to solve the puzzle. Also looks like other than these guys, nobody got anywhere with the problem. Be ready for extremely gory details of how the program was written and how it was decoded. Its a thrilling read, and OS X hacking doesn't get any more hardcore than this! Hopefully Apple fixes this bug now at last."

6 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Can we say by s1283134 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    First Post?

    1. Re:Can we say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Getting FP on an Appple-topic is like getting a CS-degree in the US - you're still a clueless fag.

    2. Re:Can we say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      You must be new here. Have you seen the number of apple fanboys around here? FP in a BSD topic is cake, but even non-apple topics have about 50% of the comments about Macs.

  2. No more X11 in OSX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    check out the apple page...you can't download the X11 binaries any more. It comes up with a "file not found....move along." type of message.

    This is more than just a little problem!

  3. Amit Singh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic


    For the slashdotters that may not be aware, Amit Singh is a common name in India like John or Mike is in the US

  4. Re:To be honest by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Some moderators are on the crack again. Most of the time i have something insightful to say and i think that the parent comment has nothing trollish.

    Some people should never be given mod points.

    --
    It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
    Be yourself no matter what they say