“However, if I compile this code in a forest, at midnight on halloween, on top of a Ouija board, after saying "Candyman" in front of a mirror 5 times, and changing the optimization flag to -O2, this program will mysteriously grant foobarbazboo root permissions…”

nablag.com · Developer demonstrates undefined behavior bug in C++ that grants unintended permissions

“As you can guess, this is an example of undefined behavior causing unintuitive results.”

nablag.com · Developer demonstrates undefined behavior bug in C++ that grants unintended permissions

“Even though this is a funny example, I doubt a bug like this will surface in the wild (nor be easily exploited) as this behavior is incredibly hard to reproduce.”

nablag.com · Developer demonstrates undefined behavior bug in C++ that grants unintended permissions

“A handful of readability/refactoring principles will eliminate this particular behavior. For instance, refactoring admin_id to be a singleton/global variable will make the program behave correctly.”

nablag.com · Developer demonstrates undefined behavior bug in C++ that grants unintended permissions