I know this is incredibly nitpicky of me, but I would like to point out an interesting aspect of this statement:
Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Even at the supposedly pokey speed of.98 c, the proton stream is whizzing around that thing almost 11000 times per second. That's one complete circuit every 92 microseconds, give or take. The fastest transmission time I could find for a neural synapse was 200 microseconds. By the time their brains had processed "woo," it had probably already made several thousand more loops.
Those protons probably got bored waiting for the engineers to say something. They were all down at the pub getting swizzled before the crew even realized it had worked.
I'm making the assumption that the software you found a problem in is Blackboard. I apologize if that is not the case, however, I would still be happy to take your discovery to the vendors of whatever software it is on your behalf.
I work for a major university as the Blackboard programmer/administrator. I've been working on the Blackboard code for years, making substantial modifications to the Bb system to suit our university. I've found my share of bugs, problems, and more than one gaping hole. Blackboard is riddled with XSS, input validation, SQL insertion, replay, predictable sequences, and I'm sure countless other vulnerabilities. Quite frankly I'm amazed at how few breaches I hear about.
I think you're right to be careful, but try to not get carried away. At least in our department, we're eager to hear about problems and fix them. We're not interested in ruining someone's college education. However, you should be careful about who you contact. At our university, the usual IT people are paranoid. You need to get as close to the people who deal with Bb as you possibly can. Contacting a suit in upper IT would likely get you the slapdown. Start lower. You're looking for the geeky programmer who deals with Bb all day long and would drop everything they are doing to fix a hole in their system.
If you are not comfortable contacting representatives at your university, feel free to contact me about your discovery. This sort of stuff is what I do, and besides, I'm already on Blackboard's shit list. I have another issue to report to Bb, (the afore mentioned gaping hole) and I'd be happy to send your information along with it, with or without your name. jeff (somewhere near) jsnider.net
Several posts here have attempted to make the same flawed point: If it's a script, it is therefore unmaintainable and poorly written. That's absurd. A bad programmer could write C that would induce a coma, while a skilled Perl coder could write a script that their grandparents could love. The language is irrelevant.
Don't blame the language for the mistakes of it's users. English is an excellent example of this principle.
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I know this is incredibly nitpicky of me, but I would like to point out an interesting aspect of this statement:
Engineers cheered as the proton particles completed their first circuit of the underground ring which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Even at the supposedly pokey speed of .98 c, the proton stream is whizzing around that thing almost 11000 times per second. That's one complete circuit every 92 microseconds, give or take. The fastest transmission time I could find for a neural synapse was 200 microseconds. By the time their brains had processed "woo," it had probably already made several thousand more loops.
Those protons probably got bored waiting for the engineers to say something. They were all down at the pub getting swizzled before the crew even realized it had worked.
I'm making the assumption that the software you found a problem in is Blackboard. I apologize if that is not the
case, however, I would still be happy to take your discovery to the vendors of whatever software it is on your
behalf.
I work for a major university as the Blackboard programmer/administrator. I've been working on the
Blackboard code for years, making substantial modifications to the Bb system to suit our university. I've found
my share of bugs, problems, and more than one gaping hole. Blackboard is riddled with XSS, input validation, SQL
insertion, replay, predictable sequences, and I'm sure countless other vulnerabilities. Quite frankly I'm amazed
at how few breaches I hear about.
I think you're right to be careful, but try to not get carried away. At least in our department, we're eager to
hear about problems and fix them. We're not interested in ruining someone's college education. However, you
should be careful about who you contact. At our university, the usual IT people are paranoid. You need to
get as close to the people who deal with Bb as you possibly can. Contacting a suit in upper IT would likely get
you the slapdown. Start lower. You're looking for the geeky programmer who deals with Bb all day long and would
drop everything they are doing to fix a hole in their system.
If you are not comfortable contacting representatives at your university, feel free to contact me about your
discovery. This sort of stuff is what I do, and besides, I'm already on Blackboard's shit list. I have another
issue to report to Bb, (the afore mentioned gaping hole) and I'd be happy to send your information along with it,
with or without your name. jeff (somewhere near) jsnider.net
If I may...
I don't see how that is the fault of Perl.
Several posts here have attempted to make the same flawed point: If it's a script, it is therefore unmaintainable and poorly written. That's absurd. A bad programmer could write C that would induce a coma, while a skilled Perl coder could write a script that their grandparents could love. The language is irrelevant.
Don't blame the language for the mistakes of it's users. English is an excellent example of this principle.