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5th Underhanded C Contest Now Open

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-c-what-you've-done-there dept.

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."

5 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Easy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    *Way* more deceptive. The default value for the destination field? It's supposed to look innocent - an innocent program would note that you left out a destination and prompt you to enter one. Any basic debugging done by someone else would turn this up. What they want is for you to leave a "comment" like "this package is top-heavy" (in a field designed for such comments) that changes the destination, but in a way such that someone reading the source code wouldn't realize anything was happening at all much what that you were changing the destination. Also such that whoever entered the text wouldn't obviously be at fault.

  2. I'm really impressed by troll8901 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've read the entire blog, and I must say, I'm impressed. Very impressed. Very, very impressed.

    The person who writes the criteria knows what he's/she's writing about.

    And the winners who submit the results are really, really good.

  3. Totally opposite by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Informative

    The true "Underhanded" program would be one that was perfectly readable, so readable in fact that you totally overlook the sneaky thing it was doing because what you think it's doing seems so clear.

    The ObsfuC contest is all about code that even after staring you can't tell what the heck is going on.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  4. Re:For extra points: by Rycross · · Score: 2, Informative

    Someone tried something similar to that.

  5. Write up of last entry by John+Meacham · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am the winner of the previous underhanded C contest. If anyone is interested, I wrote up a description of my entry on my blog here: http://notanumber.net/archives/54/underhanded-c-the-leaky-redaction

    It was a fun contest to enter and now I can shop at thinkgeek for silly gadgets without feeling guitly :)

    --
    http://notanumber.net/