Evan Martin (evan) wrote in evan_tech,
Evan Martin
evan
evan_tech

icfp status

This contest is awesome. Y'all are missing out.

They gave you a description of a VM and an image, and we wasted a lot of time thinking about how to write a disassembler or analyze the program structure when in fact you were just supposed to run it. One program generates another, and that one dumps you into a fake unix guest account.

From there, you have to write a BASIC program that brute-forces passwords for other accounts. (Why BASIC? It's the only language available!) Unfortunately, this BASIC has no functions or structure, only gotos. And even better, they don't use numbers on this system, only roman numerals, but you still have to number your lines correctly! (Of course, it helps to write a program to solve it, just like the rest of the problems...)

It gets kookier, too. Each user has their own weird problem and they all involve bizarre languages.

Our team's rockin' it at about halfway up on the scoreboard, but I've been basically working on it alone. We'll see what happens when my partner wakes up...

Now for some dinner.
Tags: icfp
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  • 18 comments

  • blog moved

    As described elsewhere, I've quit LiveJournal. If you're interested in my continuing posts, you should look at one of these (each contains feed…

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