Bugtraq mailing list archives

Re: another fatal bug in NT/2000 "Command Prompt" I/O


From: Chris Gaver Behrens <cbehrens-bugtraq () codestud com>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 15:04:42 -0700


Confirmed on a nt4ws.sp6 system, compiling the while(1) program with MS
Visual C++ 6.0.  The system was still running its services like ftp, etc,
but the UI was totally useless.  Even Ctrl-Alt-Del did not work.  Mouse
would move, but couldn't click anything.

What's interesting is...the test program was also compiled with Cygwin's
Cygnus Win32 gcc compiler....and the problem did not occur.  It seems this
might be a bug with MS C stdio libraries?

- Chris

-- 
Chris Gaver Behrens
Senior Software Architect
XO Communications


On Fri, Oct 26, 2001 at 11:35:42AM -0700, Michael Wojcik wrote:
Recent messages on the comp.lang.c and (allegedly)
comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 have documented various short programs
which cause Windows NT4 and 2000 to crash and reboot by writing certain
strings to stdout.

The following is one example of such a program:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
   while (1)
      printf("\t\t\b\b\b\b\b\b");
   return 0;
}
[...]


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