1921
Taking a Look at CLR Thread Pool 'Thread Injection' Algorithm
As part of a never-ending quest to explore the CoreCLR source code I stumbled across the intriguing titled ‘HillClimbing.cpp’ source file. This post explains what it does and why.
1922
68 things the CLR does before executing a single line of your code
Because the CLR is a managed environment there are several components within the runtime that need to be initialised before any of your code can be executed. This post will take a look at the EE (Execution Engine) start-up routine and examine the initialisation process in detail.
1923
How Dirty COW works from the Linux kernel’s perspective
Dirty COW (CVE-2016-5195) is one of the most publicised local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in 2016, courtesy to its catchy name, cute logo, potential damages, and the fact that it was discovered in the wild by a researcher Phil Oester, meaning it was already under active use at the time of discovery.
1924
Where Tcl and Tk Went Wrong (2010)
I’ve been pondering this subject for a while, and I think I’m finally ready to write about it. Tcl was, for many years, my go-to language of choice. It’s still near and dear to me…
1925
The Problem with F# Evangelism
There seems to be a constant struggle to convince seasoned C# developers to give F# a try. Which is a pity because language and concepts deserve better.
1926
Guys, unless you are really hot you are just wasting your time on Tinder
by Worst-Online-Dater
1927
When I use classes, when I don’t, what I do instead and why
When I use classes, when I don't, what I do instead, and why
1928
Scrolling your website past the iPhone X’s notch
During the introduction of the iPhone X a hilarious gif made the Twitter rounds, showing a list scrolling past the new notch.
1929
HTTPS adoption has reached the tipping point
That's it - I'm calling it - HTTPS adoption has now reached the moment of critical mass [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point] where it's gathering enough momentum that it will very shortly become "the norm" rather than the exception it so frequently was in the past.
1930
1931
The fifty shades of Latin
In the bird’s-eye view, one might have the comforting illusion that country borders are also language borders. Especially where the bor...
1932
When You Accidentally Break Your School Network in 1995
In my last post, I reminisced about my bbs software that I wrote and sold in 1993. In 1995, I was a senior in high school, and my school had just purchased a 76 computer Novell network for the 900 ...
1933
1934
Minesweeper: Advanced Tactics (2005)
In this position, I know about a bunch of mines on all the remaining fronts, but I can't quite determine where they are. There are a few mines that might be in one of two positions (red or blue), a cluster of mines that might be in one of two arrangements (green), and a more complex situation in the top left which I…
1935
1936
The Joy of Erlang; Or, How to Ride a Toruk (2011)
In the movie Avatar , there’s this big badass bird-brained pterodactyl thing called a Toruk that the main character must learn to ride in order to regain the trust of the blue people. As a general rule, Toruks do not like to be ridden, but if you fight one, subdue it, and then link your Blue Man ponytail to the…
1937
LU Factorization and Linear Systems for Programers
Solving systems of linear equations is a staple food of linear algebra. It can be applied as a part of many machine learning tasks, although it is not always...
1938
Further hardening glibc malloc() against single byte overflows
Introduction Back in 2014, while at Project Zero, I exploited a buffer overflow of a single NUL byte in glibc . Tavis Ormandy had found th...
1939
1940
IPv4 route lookup on Linux
Linux uses an LPC-trie for looking up routes. It provides good performance with low memory use even with millions of routes.
1941
Elixir multiple processes: Basics
How to work with multiple processes in Elixir
1942
1943
Why is my tcp not reliable? (2009)
This post is about an obscure corner of TCP network programming, a corner where almost everybody doesn’t quite get what is going on. I used to think I understood it, but found out last week that I didn’t.
1944
The Atoms of Programming
In the world of physics, there are many different models that can be used, though typically each of them has different applicability to different contexts. At the small scale, quantum physics is a very useful model, Newtonian physics will yield evidently incorrect predictions so is less valuable. Where a Newtonian…
1945
Mastercard Internet Gateway Service: Hashing Design Flaw
Last year I found a design error in the MD5 version of the hashing method used by Mastercard Internet Gateway Service. The flaw allows modification of transaction amount. They have awarded me with a bounty for reporting it. This year, they have switched to HMAC-SHA256, but this one also has a flaw
1946
Adventures in JIT compilation: Part 1 – an interpreter
This is the first post in a series about JIT compilers. The plan is to take a simple input language and develop some interpreters and JITs for it, in roughtly increasing degree of complexity. It's my hope that by the end of the series readers will have a good understanding of what it takes to develop a JIT compiler…
1947
Why hasn't Haskell taken over the world? And the curious case of Go
Programming is all about managing complexity. Without good tools to manage it, the complexity of programs becomes mentally intractable for our limited brains and we’d lose control and understanding of our programs (imagine writing a big software system entirely in assembly language).
1948
1949
Global Mutable State
Global mutable state is one of the biggest drivers of complexity in software systems. We tackle a definition and how to reduce our reliance on it.
1950
Why I Spent $100k to Fight a $10k Small Claims Lawsuit
What follows is my personal perspective on an interesting dispute. Obviously, it is only my opinion of the situation and there are two sides to every story. I invite the other side to respond if they wish in the comments. I also made the decision to keep the other side anonymous after I first wrote