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Revisiting the Macintosh ROM Easter Egg
eldavojohn writes "NYCResistor has published photos of what they call 'Ghosts in the ROM' after dumping Apple Mac SE ROM images from a roadside Motorola 68000-era Macintosh and looking at all the data (they mention an Easter egg reference to this from 1999). They go into some nice detail about the strategy for extracting this data from a discarded unit and noticing structure. There's also other data that they weren't able to identify, which causes one to wonder how many other Easter eggs are lying about in various ROM chips and what modern Easter eggs must be shipping with software/hardware today."
In the increasingly litigious world of software, it seemed like a lot of Easter eggs disappeared from operating systems and from business software. Software became professional and had less use for a sense of humor, undocumented code became a possible liability, and it seems to be looked upon a little more as having no place in the business world. Which is said, I think.
Let's even consider that they aren't malicious, but simply untested. It's a bunch of code that's possibly vulnerable to an exploit.
...So? You take this risk anytime you use closed source software (or anytime you don't view the source of an open source software program, and your compiler, etc.)
How do you know your web browser right now doesn't have malware built in? After all, have you read the entire source for Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Internet Explorer/Opera for the exact version you are using?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Christ, what an asshole.
Yes, this was known. But the process of pulling them off the ROMs yourself? Documenting the process? Yeah, no one was kind enough to wrap all that up in one place. It's a fun read and if you're not careful even you, Mighty Internet Commenter, might learn something.
Shut the hell up and contribute. Bitching gets no one anywhere.
It's a shame isn't it? We have to forgo these fun little tit-bits for these sorts of issues.
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http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-dennis-ritchie-a/
Oh bullshit. Did everyone forget the Quake 3 malware that sat in the repos for a year and a fricking half? For something that is INSANELY popular like Firefox then MAYBE, just maybe, you've had a couple of dozen guys that aren't the actual devs look at the thing. For the rest, the bazillion little packages that make up your average distro that nobody ever seems to even think about until it breaks? Not a chance. Tell me have YOU gone through the FF source code? How about the Libre Office source? If the answer is no then WTF makes you think anybody else has?
Just because something CAN be done does not mean it HAS been done, there is a difference. Finally have you looked at some of the source for the obfuscated C contest entries? With that you know ahead of time there is malware in it yet many devs here would be hard pressed to find it, so what makes you think that on code where nobody knows if it has or hasn't and aren't expecting to find anything nasty that you or anyone else would spot the bug if it were obfuscated and hidden among a half a million lines of code?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.