Live data from Hacker News

This page crashes Internet Explorer, even version 9 and 10.

crashie8.com

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: This page crashes Internet Explorer, even version 9 and 10.

#81
post #7

Is this a big deal? It's amusing that it is such a simple chunk of HTML, but I was under the impression that it's not terribly difficult to DoS the average browser. I accidentally discovered some very simple HTML that reliably crashes Outlook whenever you try to view or preview the message a while back. I reported it and I think they eventually fixed it.

How do you DoS chrome?

I don't know. Maybe Google is so good it's impossible (or at least limited to one tab). But I suspect it's still possible if I'm allowed to use commonly installed plugins. I think I could make a Java applet that consistently crashes.

Re: This page crashes Internet Explorer, even version 9 and 10.

#83
post #78
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/554467/loa...

After logging in, I get this: > Page Not Found > The content that you requested cannot be found or you do not have permission to view it. Did they remove the item?

Same here. Looks like they've deleted it. I couldn't find a cached copy of it either.

Re: This page crashes Internet Explorer, even version 9 and 10.

#84
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously this is a bug in IE that needs to be fixed and it's Microsoft's responsibility to ensure that their browser doesn't crash in invalid input, but end users don't actually care about the browser either (they don't even know what a browser is), they care about your site crashing.

I'd say that most do care about their browser. Chrome wouldn't have sped to such popularity otherwise, nor Firefox before it, nor Mozilla, nor... IE. If users didn't care we'd perhaps all still be using Mosaic.

One could make a good argument that Chrome was only adopted due to Google's popularity in the search space, and leveraging that to push messages along the lines of "Upgrade your browser".

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I don't think Chrome would be anything near what it is today without all of the google.com referrals.

Re: This page crashes Internet Explorer, even version 9 and 10.

#86
post #80
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, that would be stupid

Not necessarily - I don't understand how software interacts with, for example, digital cable. I've seen certain channels crash my cable box before. It wouldn't be that surprising to see a certain show reliably crash the cable box.

A topic very much like this one makes up a chapter in the wonderful book Godel, Escher, Bach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

Two characters are in a race: one to build an impervious record player, the other to design a record that - when played - sets up feedback in the record player sufficient to destroy it.

It's a stunningly simple intro to a fairly deep topic: NP completeness, input validation, etc.

Re: This page crashes Internet Explorer, even version 9 and 10.

#88

I think the most shocking thing is when you follow it through to the MSDN bug discussion—and you find people blaming the author for writing invalid HTML. Apparently IE doesn’t need to follow the robustness principle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle

This isn't a case of "Robustness principle". Not crashing on invalid input is just plain old decent programming, not to mention secure programming. Programs should not crash on invalid inputs, period. "Robustness" as in the robustness principle refers to trying to actually process invalid data and go make a guess at what the functionality should be. In fact, you can make quite a case that "robustness" as defined that…

At uni in a software testing subject I was given an assignment to read various input files (some valid, some invalid). If your program crashes, you would get 0 marks. It made for a stressful assignment execution day, but it was a good lesson.

Re: This page crashes Internet Explorer, even version 9 and 10.

#90
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that most do care about their browser. Chrome wouldn't have sped to such popularity otherwise, nor Firefox before it, nor Mozilla, nor... IE. If users didn't care we'd perhaps all still be using Mosaic.

One could make a good argument that Chrome was only adopted due to Google's popularity in the search space, and leveraging that to push messages along the lines of "Upgrade your browser". Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I don't think Chrome would be anything near what it is today without all of the google.com referrals.

This is most likely true for Chrome yes, but it's almost definitely true for IE. I feel confident claiming that at the very least half of the IE users use it because they don't have a choice or because they got it as default on Windows.
Post reply on HN