Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
1–10 of 49 posts
Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#2Am I the only one not amused by easter eggs in software? It's code that I don't know about doing stuff that I don't know about. More code means more chances for bugs, maybe even bugs that results in security vulnerabilities. If the programmer snuck it in without management approval, it may mean code that isn't as thoroughly tested as the rest of the program.
Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#3Am I the only one not amused by easter eggs in software? It's code that I don't know about doing stuff that I don't know about. More code means more chances for bugs, maybe even bugs that results in security vulnerabilities. If the programmer snuck it in without management approval, it may mean code that isn't as thoroughly tested as the rest of the program.
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Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#4Am I the only one not amused by easter eggs in software? It's code that I don't know about doing stuff that I don't know about. More code means more chances for bugs, maybe even bugs that results in security vulnerabilities. If the programmer snuck it in without management approval, it may mean code that isn't as thoroughly tested as the rest of the program.
It would be acceptable if each easter egg lasted a maximum of one release, followed by a public post-mortem on the vulnerability identified in the release management process.
Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#5Is easter eggs in VM a good idea?
Couldn't malware attempt to locate potential easter eggs in order to determine if they are in a honeypot?
Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#6Is easter eggs in VM a good idea? Couldn't malware attempt to locate potential easter eggs in order to determine if they are in a honeypot?
I think that there are millions of other aspects in a software (in vmware) which are much more important than easter egg or not easter egg. So the impact of an easter egg to this software quality is not significant.
Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#7Am I the only one not amused by easter eggs in software? It's code that I don't know about doing stuff that I don't know about. More code means more chances for bugs, maybe even bugs that results in security vulnerabilities. If the programmer snuck it in without management approval, it may mean code that isn't as thoroughly tested as the rest of the program.
A programmer that leaves an easter egg in some critical part of the software really isn't worth his salt. For the very first thing, it would be way too obvious (no longer qualifying as an easter egg), and second, for the reasons you mentioned.
The way this is implemented, I can't see any harm: Instead of getting something along the line "BLEEP LOADER NOT FOUND AT 0" (and you'll still get this if len(floppyimg)>0 ) you get pong.
I think one should be amused here.
Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#8Am I the only one not amused by easter eggs in software? It's code that I don't know about doing stuff that I don't know about. More code means more chances for bugs, maybe even bugs that results in security vulnerabilities. If the programmer snuck it in without management approval, it may mean code that isn't as thoroughly tested as the rest of the program.
You aren't concerned with 'hidden' code - you're concerned about this now because you know it's there. Because it isn't hidden.
If you're worried about code doing things you don't know about then there's a heck of a lot more to VMWare that you could be concerned with. It's a huge, complex application. A few KB for a hidden game is irrelevant - you don't know what hundreds of MB of it actually does. If you're worried about things being hidden in apps then you run them in a trusted environment on tested hardware after you're audited the code (and removed the easter egg).
The only reason this should worry anyone is because VMWare potentially lost sales to organisations who do need to run audited code. I imagine they would have been supplied a version without the Easter Egg though.
Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#9This is just an article linking to an article[1], which itself links to a Google translation of an article written in French[2].
[1]http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/vmware-nested-easter-...
Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation
#10Am I the only one not amused by easter eggs in software? It's code that I don't know about doing stuff that I don't know about. More code means more chances for bugs, maybe even bugs that results in security vulnerabilities. If the programmer snuck it in without management approval, it may mean code that isn't as thoroughly tested as the rest of the program.