The Zero-Day Exploit Clock Is Ticking
The Zero-Day Exploit Clock Is Ticking A Personal Introduction The notion of breaking into a system and making it do something its developers never intended has existed since the early days of computing. My own introduction to computing came through hacking into games — disabling or increasing the number of lives to compensate for my slow reflexes. Using TD (Turbo Debugger, from Borland — shipped alongside Turbo Assembler and Turbo C/C++), I would painstakingly try to identify the memory location that held the lives counter. Once found, one could either alter the value directly or place a NOP (No Operation) over the conditional jump. It was a task that required patience, determination, and, many times, reams of sprocketed continuous-feed paper annotated to help decipher what the code did. Discoveries were rarely kept to oneself. You shared them with others on BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems), the dial-up communities that served as gathering places for the technically curious long befor...