November 2018

Using linker segments and __declspec(allocate(…)) to arrange data in a specific order

Raymond Chen November 7, 2018 Nov 7, 2018 11/7/18

Getting the ducks in a row, in order.

Dubious security vulnerability: A program that adds a user to the Administrators group in the usual way

Raymond Chen November 6, 2018 Nov 6, 2018 11/6/18

A security vulnerability report indicated that Windows was vulnerable to having a user added to the Administrators group. The finder attached a program demonstrating the issue. (To make things more exciting, they characterized the program as "malicious" and the person running it as an "attacker".) The finder didn't include source code, but ...

Sure, you can implement your own cryptographic service provider for a standard algorithm, but why would you?

Raymond Chen November 5, 2018 Nov 5, 2018 11/5/18

A customer wanted to write their own custom implementation of an existing standard encryption algorithm. The customer liaison noted that this custom implementation would presumably produce results identical to the built-in implementation because it is, after all, a standard. But if that's the case, there doesn't seem to be much point to the ...

Why does the MonthCalendar control show the wrong week numbers in Romania?

Raymond Chen November 2, 2018 Nov 2, 2018 11/2/18

A customer liaison reported that the MonthCalendar control was showing incorrect week numbers when run on a Romanian system. They included screen shots of the calendar control running on a German system and a Romanian system for comparison: Germany Romania January 1 falls on a Friday. The German calendar calls it week 53...

In the state of Washington, you are allowed to turn left on a red light onto a one-way street

Raymond Chen November 1, 2018 Nov 1, 2018 11/1/18

A little-known quirk of the driving laws in the state of Washington is that, after coming to a complete stop, you are allowed to turn left on a red light onto a one-way street. Note the requirement that the destination street be a one-way street. A left turn against a red light onto a two-way street is not allowed. What is even less ...

If the prototypes of DispatchMessageA and DispatchMessageW are identical, why have both?

Raymond Chen November 1, 2018 Nov 1, 2018 11/1/18

There are a number of functions, mostly in the window manager, which have both ANSI and Unicode variants, even though the prototypes are identical. Why can't these pairs of functions be combined into a single function? Clearly there's no CHAR/WCHAR mismatch, seeing as the parameters are identical. While it's true that there is no type ...

The Old New Thing

November 2018 - Page 3 of 3 - The Old New Thing

Using linker segments and __declspec(allocate(…)) to arrange data in a specific order

Dubious security vulnerability: A program that adds a user to the Administrators group in the usual way

Sure, you can implement your own cryptographic service provider for a standard algorithm, but why would you?

Why does the MonthCalendar control show the wrong week numbers in Romania?

In the state of Washington, you are allowed to turn left on a red light onto a one-way street

If the prototypes of DispatchMessageA and DispatchMessageW are identical, why have both?

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