Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

Post by kylek » Thu, Aug 21, 2014, 3:02 PM UTC

jadc wrote: post #16

blowski wrote: post #9

This 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-... [2] http://www.hypervisor.fr/?p=4063

The French article has a comment by Regis Duschene one of the VMware Fusion developers stating that there is an Easter Egg in the Easter Egg. The virtualghetto.com article is referring to that second easter egg (i.e. the Pride mode) and telling you how to "unlock" it. The post linked to here on HN is by M. Elizabeth Scott who created the Pong OS easter egg while at VMware. A version of the code of the Pong OS can be…

Post by Someone1234 » Thu, Aug 21, 2014, 3:36 PM UTC

cujo wrote: post #30

Someone1234 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with Easter Eggs in products. That being said another good example of an "Easter Egg gone wrong" was the games in Excel 95 and 97. Excel 95 had a "Doom"-like 3D game. Excel 97 had a basic flight simulator. These were fun and weren't buggy, but here's the problem: How much time do you think was lost in classrooms in particular after all the kids discovered there were games they could be playing instead of work…

I find it hilarious that you're upset with easter eggs in principle because kids were distracted during class. I'm sure all those kids couldn't hack it in the real world because of these awful distractions.

Post by officialjunk » Thu, Aug 21, 2014, 4:12 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #34

officialjunk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the personal blog post of the author of the easter egg.

Oh, I stand corrected. Sorry.

Post by acuozzo » Thu, Aug 21, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

ayrx wrote: post #20

TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's fun . As the industry matures, people seem to lose the sense of humuor - which is sad, because practical jokes and playfullness is what created said industry.

There is a time and place for humor. Important software is not one of them. When I run something on my machine I want it to do exactly what it is supposed to, nothing more and nothing less. You won't be laughing if $RANDOM_EASTER_EGG has a bug that allows for remote code execution.

Post by tedunangst » Thu, Aug 21, 2014, 5:04 PM UTC

ayrx wrote: post #15

onion2k wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes. It's a huge codebase. Why complicate it further by adding something 100% unnecessary? You cannot assume any bit of code no matter how small is irrelevant. If it's there it's potentially exploitable.