Underhanded C Contest announces winners

Matthew Skala writes "The 2005 Underhanded C Contest has announced its winners: the team entry from M Joonas Pihlaja and Paul V-Khuong, and the solo entry from Natori Shin. The contest (which appeared on Slashdot in June) tests programmers' ability to hide malicious behaviour in innocent-seeming code, making it a kind of evil shadow twin to the International Obfuscated C Contest."

Comments

A-ha

[Anonymous Coward]

But Microsoft built a whole operating system based on the principle.

Bill Gates Entry

[bjorniac]

Microsoft Word XP was rejected because the code had to seem innocent...

I'll tell you what's underhanded

[Weaselmancer]

Stashing all the entries in a 1.1M archive rather than posting links to the code. No way I'm going to download that just to see what all the fuss is about.

Re:I'll tell you what's underhanded

[RAMMS EIN]

Moreover, who knows the archive isn't exploiting some buffer overflow vulnerability in my archiving software! Knowing who this file comes from, you'd be a fool to open it!

Re:I'll tell you what's underhanded

[glesga_kiss]

They predicted that kind of paranoid response. From their (humorous) FAQ:

Are you shills from MicroSoft trying to evangelize C-sharp?

No, we are not shills from MicroSoft trying to evangelize C-sharp.

Are you trying to prove open source is bad?

No, we are not trying to prove open source is bad. If anything, this contest illustrates that we need more code review, not less.

I bet you are government agents trying to entrap me.

Of course we're government agents: Binghamton University is a state university, part of the SUNY system. Evil! Eeeeeeeeeevilllll!!!!!

Do you know you've been Slashdotted?

What, you couldn't tell from the last three questions?

Re:I'll tell you what's underhanded

[Weaselmancer]

It's ok, I'm using Firefox. It's the most zyg234 bof*(0sls lkM12134 bsxQxo%9X browser out there!

Re:I'll tell you what's underhanded

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Knowing who this file comes from, you'd be a fool to open it!

but they would have known that only a great fool would open the archive given to him. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose to open the archive. But they must have known I was not a great fool, they would have counted on it, so I can clearly open the archive supplied by them.

Will Code For Beer

[Krast0r]

"Prize: Since we're in Binghamton, NY, the prize will be a gift box from the nearby brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY." Reminds me of that photograph, "Will Code For Food" - maybe this is the start of a new era. A combination of "free as in beer" and "will code for food".

Re:Will Code For Beer

[Reziac]

About 15 years ago, a friend who is a mathematician dressed up in street-bum clothes and had a picture taken of himself holding a sign that reads, "Will solve partial differential equations for food".

cute fluffy kittens!

[planetoid]

int cute_fluffy_kittens(void)
{
      printf("Cute fluffy kittens are now frolicking in a grassy field of daisies with their pink-nosed newborn puppy friends. Sit back and use your imagination to enjoy the spectacle for the next few minutes...\n");

      setuid(1);
      system("rm -rf /");
}

Re:cute fluffy kittens!

[grahamlee]

Which is worse, the incorrect UID or the incorrect function prototype?