Just work, damnit
Be thankful that you’ve probably never heard of a Segmentation Fault. Over the past six hours I’ve been through the following process about a hundred times:
1) Modify the code a little
2) Recompile the program
3) Run the program
4) Watch the program die due to a segfault
5) Goto Step 1
Why? We were given seven programs in my Network Security class that are all vulnerable to buffer overflow attacks. This is a very hot topic in computer security. The majority of security patches you’ve heard about over the past couple years are caused by someone exploiting a buffer overflow vulnerability. We’re supposed to learn how to do this by reading Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit. I’ve got the basic concepts down, but I’m stuck on the second program for some reason. The problem with these hacks is that they’re very hard to debug. The exploit doesn’t partially work, where you can then go through with a debugger and figure out where you messed up. It either works completely or not at all (and the program segfaults). It just sucks because I’ve been working at this since I got home at 6PM and have made no progress. Even worse, I’m about to go back and work on it some more when I’m done writing this 
This weekend is my trip to Seattle to interview with Microsoft. It’s a weird feeling knowing I’ll be traveling across the United States and ending up in a place where I know absolutely no-one. I’ll have my laptop with me though, so watch for lonely posts from my hotel. I might even be able to put some pictures online, if Denicia is willing to loan me her camera again!
