Category: programming

See how closed API reverse engineering typically happens.

Now that I was able to sign and fingerprint my login requests, I combined everything into a small Node.js module that allows some basic Starbucks API functions. The good news is that it’s (mostly) hosted here on GitHub!

Voilà! Programmatic coffee.

Source: Starbucks should really make their APIs public. – Tendigi

Like I always say, all (non-trivial) software have bugs. It’s a matter of when and if they are discovered. If you’re lucky, the bugs may only result in financial loss. In more serious cases, safety and security can be compromised.

When the system was introduced in the mid-1990s, the program code filtered out any transactions that were given three-digit branch codes from 089 to 100 and used those prefixes for testing purposes.

But in 1998, the company started using alphanumeric branch codes as it expanded its business. Among them were the codes 10B, 10C and so on, which the system treated as being within the excluded range, and so their transactions were removed from any reports sent to the SEC.

Source: Programming bug costs Citigroup $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

A long-ish article on the history of Windows and a few behind the scenes look at the technology powering the various generations of Windows. The creation of OneCore explains why Microsoft is able to deploy Windows 10 to such a wide range of platforms, from Raspberry Pi, to XBox, to servers and even Hololens.

Microsoft promised developers that Windows would run anywhere. This summer, it finally will.

Source: OneCore to rule them all: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

A sensational title for sure. I, for one, am not convinced that progress in AI will lead to end of code. Techniques like ML will just become another tool, albeit a powerful one, in our toolbox. Formulating the right problem in the first place is something even most humans can’t do very well.

Welcome to the new world of artificial intelligence. Soon, we won’t program computers. We’ll train them. Like dolphins. Or dogs. Or humans.

Source: Soon We Won’t Program Computers. We’ll Train Them Like Dogs

It’s been a long time coming. Goodbye Java (plugin). That reminds me of those Java applets that I wrote in a different era. Now if I could only find and convert (rewrite) them to HTML5…

It will be removed some time after the release of Java 9.

Source: Oracle deprecates the Java browser plugin, prepares for its demise

A break from the usual cybersecurity stories. Here’s a nice one on obfuscated C, if you can call it that.

$ cat test.c
const int main[] = {
-443987883, 440, 113408, -1922629632,
4149, 899584, 84869120, 15544,
266023168, 1818576901, 1461743468, 1684828783,
-1017312735
};
$ gcc test.c -o a.out
$ ./a.out
Hello World!


Yes I tested and it works. Want to know how it works? Here’s the link:
Main is usually a function. So then when is it not?.