Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft Software => Topic started by: caustic on 20 March 2002, 02:32
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I hexedited two windows shortcuts so that they point to each other, on viewing the folder explorer crashes repeatedly, this is a pretty big flaw, right? No execution required, explorer tries to find the icon for the shortcut and goes into an infinite loop, this ought to be important. Opinions please. :eek: :D :D :D
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Well it should report an error and exit gracefully. However I am not sure this is the biggest problem with windows....what version of winblows was it??
There are known memory leaks and other problems of a more fundimental nature in many winblows versions.
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i have a feeling that problem will be there for all the 9x versions, and probably all the NT ones too, i can't talk for CE or the 8bit ones though.
This doesn't sound too threatening, but it's not a large chunk of stuff, and it sounds like, it could be shoehorned into another fairly small bunch of code, and circulated easily, probably without any executables et c et c, as you say, easily bringing windows to its knees, which is what we like to see after all!
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But it says something about the quality of programmer MS employs. This sort of eventuality should surely have some code that prevents the infinite loop from ever occuring, or am I wrong?
Maybe most of MS bugs are due to coders not taking the time to prepare the code for unforeseen eventualities.
Caustic, are shortcuts easy to hexedit? Could you give us a * brief * rundown on how you did it?
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Well I know coders from M$ and for the record they are some of the best coders around. Microsoft hires and seeks out the best coders from the best schools. They have tonnes of talent in their coders. The problem with M$ and many software companies is that the coders do not decide what freatures are included into products and they do not set the deadlines for the realease dates. The entire industry ships unfinnished products all the time...they all do it, thats just how the industry works. Just imagine for a sec. Bill Gates is the head software architect at M$ and he is not a developer. He cant and does not write code...never has and never will. And that is who is incharge of the developers. Imagine for a sec that the surgical teams at your local Hospital were run and dictated to by an accountant, thats what is happening at M$.
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Do you know any of the programmers from the pre MS-DOS Microsoft days? Back when they were in to UNIX (Xenix)? I was reading that they did all of their DOS development, and Windows development on Xenix all the way up into the 3.x series. And I understand that the only reason they decided to get their own OS is so they could have complete control over it (politically). Was just curious if you knew anyone with more insight into that part of the MS era.
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Ok I asked and although he wasnt at M$ that far back he said the did most of their development work on Xenix back before they sold it to SCO. M$ believes in the "eating your own dog food" style of development...bye the way what is SCO doing these days.
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quote:
Originally posted by dbl221:
Ok I asked and although he wasnt at M$ that far back he said the did most of their development work on Xenix back before they sold it to SCO. M$ believes in the "eating your own dog food" style of development...bye the way what is SCO doing these days.
I don't know but I was never a fan of SCO. I had several machines set up with it for a special app and it was a UNIX that was not like the others.
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quote:
Originally posted by caustic:
I hexedited two windows shortcuts so that they point to each other....
really? ... hmmmm if you say so
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quote:
Originally posted by MxCl:
Caustic, are shortcuts easy to hexedit? Could you give us a * brief * rundown on how you did it?
Quite easy, but sounds confusing. Make a file eg.123.txt and make a shortcut to it and then make a copy of this shortcut, open the first shortcut in a hex editor (i recommend winhex) and change the second reference to the oringinal filename (should be chracter-spaced unicode style) to the filename of the second shortcut (make sure the the shortcut has the same number of characters as the first file) and then hexedit the second shortcut so that it points to the first (*stops for air*). Press save and enjoy the fireworks. (use dos prompt to rename or delete the files when youre done)
By the way, I done this in XP. Thats progress for you.
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It's not really a bug, seeing as you had to use a hex editor to do it. If any idiot could do it, then that would be the time for concern.
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But the point is that this *could* :rolleyes: be distributed widespread through emails for example, and lamers (and even us) worldwide would unzip the shortcuts to their desktop and then stare in confusement at their screen as explorer crashes. It has the potential to wreak quite some havoc as nothing needs to be executed. Although it would be way more potent if I could get it to work in any directory, as I can only seem to get it to work in specific paths ('C:\windows\desktop\' useful) even by using variables like %CD% and . , if anyone has any suggestions and if anyone else has recreated this phenomena i'd like to hear from you.
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quote:
Originally posted by caustic:
Quite easy, but sounds confusing. Make a file eg.123.txt and make a shortcut to it and then make a copy of this shortcut, open the first shortcut in a hex editor (i recommend winhex) and change the second reference to the oringinal filename (should be chracter-spaced unicode style) to the filename of the second shortcut (make sure the the shortcut has the same number of characters as the first file) and then hexedit the second shortcut so that it points to the first (*stops for air*). Press save and enjoy the fireworks. (use dos prompt to rename or delete the files when youre done)
huh?, i made an empty notepad file (named 123.txt), made a shortcut to it, copied the shortcut (renamed it 123a. Then i opened the first shortcut (just named 123) and there is no coding in the hex editor (hex workshop). so, what am i suppoed to do now?
[ March 24, 2002: Message edited by: Druaga ]
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Re :D ruaga
You should keep the copied shortcut to three characters (try 321.lnk). Open the first shortcut (123.lnk) in the hex editor (make sure it is the shortcut and not what it points to) and you should see something like (in ASCII view):
...\123.txt...
........3.9...
0.i....1.2.3..
.t.x.t........
its the second one you need to edit (1.2.3...t.x.t --> 3.2.1...l.n.k) and then do the same for the other one making it point to this one. Hope you understood, its a little awkward. www.winhex.com (http://www.winhex.com)
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it keeps opening what the shortcut points to (123.txt) instead of the actual shortcut (123.lnk). so how do i get it to edit the shortcut , not the file??
[ March 26, 2002: Message edited by: Druaga ]
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it turns out that, hex workshop wont open shortcuts (easily), But i got winhex and it opens shortcuts.
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i am gonna try it now, thanks
[ March 26, 2002: Message edited by: Druaga ]
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i did a bit more testing with this:
i made 123.lnk point to 321.lnk then put it in a zip file. I did the same with 321.lnk.
now, i unzipped the files contents to my desktop, and nothing happened, i opened each up in winhex (didnt change anything at all) after i closed winhex, i had the error come up, clicked close, and explorer restarted without my active desktop.
the shortcuts were still there, i clicked on them (wouldnt execute), poked and prodded them, but nothing more happened.
i also tried this in another normal folder, and nothing happened.
Perhaps, that the active desktop is what enables it to crash without execution?
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Ok, here.
http://www.geocities.com/garyoneill2/v0rteX.zip (http://www.geocities.com/garyoneill2/v0rteX.zip)
extract to C:\
view C:\
(Use dos to delete)
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doesnt work. I can only get my zip to work when extracted to desktop...
and whats "stub.log" it says in the hex editor of "4321.lnk"? Both of the shortcuts point to something called stub.log, you forgot to hexedit them to point to eachother
[ April 02, 2002: Message edited by: Master of Reality ]
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stub.log is just a file that was in C:\.
There is just one reference in the shortcut that needs to be edited in order to change the target of the shortcut, I left the others intact as I am a lazy boy. Has anyone made any improvements to it? Like getting it to work in any directory?
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i have yet to get it to work after extracting it from a .zip file (or from a self extracting .exe)
has anyone tried this in linux yet?
i suspect that linux would gracefully drop the loop.
[ April 06, 2002: Message edited by: Master of Reality ]
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I have figured out that the version on www.geocitites.com/garyoneill2 (http://www.geocitites.com/garyoneill2) only works with windows NT/2000/XP and not 9x as the shortcuts use a slightly different format, but it should work. I hope to get both working versions uploaded soon.
www.geocitites.com/garyoneill2 (http://www.geocitites.com/garyoneill2)
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quote:
Originally posted by caustic:
I have figured out that the version on www.geocitites.com/garyoneill2 (http://www.geocitites.com/garyoneill2) only works with windows NT/2000/XP and not 9x as the shortcuts use a slightly different format, but it should work. I hope to get both working versions uploaded soon.
www.geocitites.com/garyoneill2 (http://www.geocitites.com/garyoneill2)
I used winzip to make a self-extracting executable, that way it will extract it to the proper directory for the user.
But it got deleted when i formated windows (i'll make another one on my windoze machine)