20090311

Problem ID: 308523247893360019
Entered by: Zachary Fisher

All ur base 8 are belong to Flash app

Last night, I saw a commercial for an online life insurance tool from a large insurance company. It seemed to me that if an insurance company sinks dismal-economy dollars into television advertising for a web-app, they place some significant value on it.

And where there is value, there are bugs.

So during the course of exploring, I decided to try some input validation tests. Here are the fruits of my labors for your consideration.

Anticipated Retirement Age Validation
This is the known good example. Apparently, I cannot retire this year. Good advice.


And here is how I broke it.

Your Annual Income Validation
Here is the known good example.

What happens if I simply put a zero in front of the value? Well for starters, I need a lot less insurance.

After navigating away and coming back, I observed that my Annual Income had undergone a transformation.


Looks like my "0200000" entry

... was interpreted in base eight.


Bringing it all together
Knowing what I now know about the input validation ( or lack thereof ) I submit the following question: Is there a problem with a 100 year old person, who wishes they had retired when they were 65, being told that they may need $40,141 of life insurance based off their $200,000 annual income interpreted in base 8?

  Edit

1 Comment:

March 17, 2009 at 9:59 AM  
Comment ID: 5194349803315713829
Written by: Anonymous

Oh, Octal. How I miss my PDP-11.

Post a Comment