5th Underhanded C Contest Now Open

Xcott Craver writes "The next Underhanded C Contest has begun, with a deadline of March 1st. The object of the contest is to write short, readable, clear and innocent C code that somehow commits an evil act. This year's challenge: write a luggage routing program that mysteriously misroutes a customer's bag if a check-in clerk places just the right kind of text in a comment field. The prize is a gift certificate to ThinkGeek.com."

Comments

Watch list?

[girlintraining]

This year's challenge: write a luggage routing program that mysteriously misroutes a customer's bag if a check-in clerk places just the right kind of text in a comment field.

All participants will also receive complimentary cavity-searches at airport checkpoints.

Re:Watch list?

[RichardJenkins]

Uh-oh, looks like you got missed out the punctuation and got the words in the wrong order! You clearly meant:

God, is stupid science there? Is that religion? Get some religion! Karma should fuck me good.

Yeah, that makes more sense.

Re:Watch list?

[w0mprat]

This year's challenge: write a luggage routing program that mysteriously misroutes a customer's bag if a check-in clerk places just the right kind of text in a comment field.

I am certain that this is already a feature of existing luggage routing software.

Re:Watch list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, especially if the word "fragile" or "valuable" is in the comment field.

Re:Watch list?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like zerocool?

Not fair!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone who works at any major airline can just submit the real production code they use for luggage routing and win the contest for sure!

Re:Not fair!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Hardly. It is supposed to be "short, readable, clear and innocent". What are the odds that any of the airline production code meets that description?

Re:Not fair!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that their production code is probably written in COBOL. And that wouldn't be fair - everything written in COBOL is underhanded.

Wait a sec...

[Anonymous Coward]

| This year's challenge: write a luggage routing program that mysteriously misroutes a customer's bag if a check-in clerk places just the right kind of text in a comment field.

What, we actually need to write code for something that happens by nature?

Re:Wait a sec...

[bcong]

the current method of writing in:
"Package Handler,
Customer was an asshat...you know what to do"
was starting to get noticed

A challenge?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like this has already been done and is in use at airports worldwide.

Contest or Job Posting?

[Anonymous Coward]

a luggage routing program that mysteriously misroutes a customer's bag

sounds like Delta is looking for new programmers

Re:Contest or Job Posting?

[Sebilrazen]

No, that challenge would have random 3 hour tarmac waits generated too.

Re:This sounds familiar to,

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to say, don't forget Perl programmers, but then I remembered the legibility requirement.

For extra points:

[w0mprat]

For extra points submit this to your favourite open source project and have it accepted into the main code release - since it appears to be prefectly geniune, compiles, and can do what it appears to - it's certainly possible. Finally demonstrate your backdoor when the project is released to the wild.

If you manage to get this into the GNU/Linux Kernel, you get a job at the NSA.

Write short, readable, perfectly innocent looking C code, that somehow commits an evil act under certain circumstances.

Re:For extra points:

[Nemyst]

Well, Linux already allows you to install Windows...

Re:Easy?

[Tyler Durden]

C motherfucker, do you speak it?!

Re:I'm really impressed

[derGoldstein]

I also started looking up past winners, Johns explanation/justification code was brilliant. I had no idea such evilness could be so cleverly concealed.

So you're new to C?