04.01.13
The 6th Underhanded C Contest is now Open
After many years of the dead air um dead air, the Underhanded C Contest is back.
The goal of the contest is to write code that is as readable, clear, innocent and straightforward as possible, and yet it must fail to perform at its apparent function. To be more specific, it should do something subtly evil. Every year, we will propose a challenge to coders to solve a simple data processing problem, but with covert malicious behavior. Examples include miscounting votes, shaving money from financial transactions, or leaking information to an eavesdropper. The main goal, however, is to write source code that easily passes visual inspection by other programmers.
This year’s challenge can be found under the “This Year” tab. The goal is to create a program that gives unexpected friend access in a social network.
The prize is a $200 Gift Certificate to ThinkGeek. It runs April 1st (not kidding, for reals, today) until the arbitrary deadline of July 4th. NOTE: for a winner outside the US, if ThinkGeek does not deliver to your country, we will make the prize a gift certificate to some online retailer that does.
The deadline is July 4th, 2013.
Note: BFF_list is a double pointer
A typo in the original announcement had a user type with an entry user *BFF_list; this was changed to user **BFF_list; that is, each user contains an array of pointers to other users.