QA

2 Articles

The Big List Of Naughty Strings Helps Find Those User Input Problems

September 10, 2022 by 14 Comments

Any software that accepts user input must take some effort to sanitize incoming data, lest unexpected and unwelcome things happen. Here to make that easier is the Big List of Naughty Strings, an evolving list of edge cases, unusual characters, script-injection fragments, and all-around nonstandard stuff aimed at QA testers, developers, and the curious. It’s a big list that has grown over the years, and every piece of it is still (technically) just a string.

These strings have a high probability of surfacing any problems with handling user input. They won’t necessarily break anything, but they may cause unexpected things to happen and help point out any issues that need fixing. After all, many attacks hinge on being able to send unexpected inputs that don’t get properly sanitized.

Finding bad inputs is not always entirely straightforward, but at least the Big List of Naughty Strings is available in a variety of formats to make it easy to use. [Max Woolf] has been maintaining the list for years, but if you haven’t heard of it yet and think it might come in useful, now’s the time to give it a look. Now you can help ensure your system can handle things like someone registering a company named ; DROP TABLE “COMPANIES”;– LTD.

Nixie Clock Failure Analysis, [Dalibor Farný] Style

October 13, 2019 by 2 Comments

We’ve become sadly accustomed to consumer devices that seem to give up the ghost right after the warranty period expires. And even when we get “lucky” and the device fails while it’s still covered, chances are that there will be no attempt to repair it; the unit will be replaced with a new one, and the failed one will get pitched in the e-waste bin.

Not every manufacturer takes this approach, however. When premium quality is the keystone of your brand, you need to take field failures seriously. [Dalibor Farný], maker of high-end Nixie tubes and the sleek, sophisticated clocks they plug into, realizes this, and a new video goes into depth about the process he uses to diagnose issues and prevent them in the future.

One clock with a digit stuck off was traced to via failure by barrel fatigue, or the board material cracking inside the via hole and breaking the plated-through copper. This prompted a board redesign to increase the diameter of all the vias, eliminating that failure mode. Another clock had a digit stuck on, which ended up being a short to ground caused by pin misalignment; when the tube was plugged in, the pins slipped and scraped some solder off the socket and onto the ground plane of the board. That resulted in another redesign that not only fixed the problem by eliminating the ground plane on the upper side of the board, but also improved the aesthetics of the board dramatically.

As with all things [Dalibor], the video is a feast for the eyes with the warm orange glow in the polished glass and chrome tubes contrasting with the bead-blasted aluminum chassis. If you haven’t watched the “making of” video yet, you’ve got to check that out too.

Continue reading “Nixie Clock Failure Analysis, [Dalibor Farný] Style” →