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NULL license plate not such a bright idea

knrs.iheart.com

391–400 of 484 posts

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#392
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Droogie contacted the DMV who told him to change his plate. He refused because he didn't do anything wrong. While they wiped the fines off his record, unfortunately for him, they didn't fix the problem in the system so once again, Droogie has accrued another $6,000 in tickets that he had nothing to do with. He says he won't be paying those either. Except he just contacted the DMV. No lawyers necessary.

Really I'm surprised they didn't just add NULL to the list of banned words and ban/refuse to renew the tag which seems eminently within their powers.

Perhaps they did and the renewal system just assumed that banned word was missing and silently skipped it.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#393

A colleague used an app's "generate secure password" feature to change their ISP's web portal login - which then also became the WAN router's password - which they didn't realise. It was about a week before the router dropped its connection and needed to re-authenticate - and that's when I was called in to investigate the loss of connectivity - which Windows 10 very unhelpfully reported as the network cable disconnec…

Many, many websites will happily accept passwords of $X characters and then hash only $(X-Y) characters on registration, but try to hash all $X characters on login, so of course the hashes don’t match. And at no point do they tell you the maximum number of characters.

Had this issue with Google a few years ago when I tried to set my password to something ludicrously long (think 5000+ characters). It would happily change my password, but I couldn't log in to anything afterwards…

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#394
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has happened multiple times. NULL, NV, XXX, MISSING, NO PLATE

I wonder if the system is also vulnerable to SQL injection via vanity plates.

I think this is unlikely since plates are alphanumeric. Although I suppose if you faked an image of a plate it's possible you could cause problems for a plate scanner.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of range limits are you talking about? 30? 100?

Often it's 20. Not sure why 20 is so common.

Someone somewhere probably posted a code sample with a 20 character limit...

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK we fixed this by making it a legal requirement for the owner of the car to identify the driver (obviously unless there's a valid reason you can't, such as it being stolen). Two MPs have actually been caught out by this law, convicted of perverting the course of justice and sent to prison: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Onasanya - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huhne

> On 3 February 2012, Huhne resigned from the Cabinet when he was charged with perverting the course of justice over a 2003 speeding case. His wife at the time, Vicky Pryce, had claimed that she was driving the car, and accepted the licence penalty points on his behalf so that he could avoid being banned from driving. Huhne denied the charge until the trial began on 4 February 2013 when he changed his plea to guilty,…

He didn't get sent to prison for speeding. He got sent to prison for having the audacity to think he could pull a fast one on them and the balls to actually try.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK we fixed this by making it a legal requirement for the owner of the car to identify the driver (obviously unless there's a valid reason you can't, such as it being stolen). Two MPs have actually been caught out by this law, convicted of perverting the course of justice and sent to prison: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Onasanya - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huhne

> On 3 February 2012, Huhne resigned from the Cabinet when he was charged with perverting the course of justice over a 2003 speeding case. His wife at the time, Vicky Pryce, had claimed that she was driving the car, and accepted the licence penalty points on his behalf so that he could avoid being banned from driving. Huhne denied the charge until the trial began on 4 February 2013 when he changed his plea to guilty,…

Generally the courts punish "crimes against justice" such as perjury very harshly as it is seen as an attack on the rule of law itself, something much more valuable than any amount of money. When I was a juror they made it clear that if we got caught talking about the case or did any independent research, we could and would be going to prison.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#398
post #359
post #43

I read years ago in comp.risks about a similar story. A guy in 1979(!) requested a personalized plate "SAILING", with second choice "BOATING". He didn't want a customized plate if he couldn't get those, so for his third choice he put down "NO PLATE". Of course, he ended up with "NO PLATE". He ended up getting 2500 parking tickets, since cars with no plate had "NO PLATE" written on the ticket. References: http://www.m…

I saw a car with that specific plate a year or two ago. It seemed like it might work like humor in the TSA line. Fine as long as you have extra time on your hands. I wonder if it has even been towed/impounded?

> Fine as long as you have extra time on your hands.

And of course, in programmer humour, this translates to "while you're not busy with anything else, issue a fine." :)

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of range limits are you talking about? 30? 100?

I believe that Blizzard had a limit of ~20 until recently for battle.net accounts (don't know if that's still the case).

Passwords for Blizzard accounts are also case-insensitive, as they are converted to upper case before hashing. Try it!

I first found this while working on a WoW server emulator in around 2009, but I believe it's been the case since Battle.net 1.0 was launched in 1996. In order to preserve backwards compatibility, it's never been changed.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a BevMo cashier in California ask me, “Massachusetts? Is that in Canada?” Very little faith left.

I once had a cab driver take me to MIT. Cab driver: "what is this place?" Me: "MIT" Cab driver: "what's MIT?" Me: "the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." Cab driver: "what's Massachusetts?"

I've heard that, three blocks from Caltech, many people have never heard of the university.
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