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The 2006 Underhanded C Contest Begins
Xcott Craver writes "The second annual Underhanded C Code Contest is live as of April 4th, and runs until July 4th. The object is to write malicious C code that looks perfectly readable and innocent under informal inspection of the source."
From the FAQ: Why?
We were initially inspired by Daniel Horn's Obfuscated V contest in the fall of 2004. I was greatly impressed to see how even a short program to simply count characters in a text file can be made to fail, and fail only on one specific day.
The longer answer is that my research interests are in covert behavior: detecting it, and getting past people who try to detect it.
The prize is $100.00, I think it should be more IMHO.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
At the risk of being redundant... Was just configuring a PHP include file, realizing there is not standard or even accepted practice for the names and forms of include files in PHP. I remember this one C project though that had standardized on having no compiler checking on function declarations, prefering instead this giant switch statement that decided what function to call at runtime. What a nightmare. This was a "best practice". Had arrived late as a troubleshooter, took me forever to recover my senses and ask why the hell are we doing this. For applications, I would think the names and forms of things would be more standard in Ruby, will see...I like Python for its significant whitespace.
It's a sad commentary on Slashdot's users that this is only modded to (as of this writing) +3.
Come on guys, shouldn't every coder have at least some vague idea of what the Halting Problem is, not to mention its implications for computing in particular and the limits of what is knowable in general.
Hilbert's Program is dead! Since 1931! Quick, somebody inform Slashdot!
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Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
No, silly, I meant the OP should have been modded +5 Funny.
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