what do “hackers” mean by finding a “vulnerability”. It’s hard to understand how there can be a gap in code that grants that much access.

Question

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**Thank you guys for all the great answers I am enlightened. Computers are fascinating to me so this is a real treat!

In: 1007

Answer 1

The short answer is that it is difficult to write perfect code.

The more complex the task, the more often you have to choose between “quick and dirty” and “long and careful” coding.

For example, SQL had a famous “vulnerability” where a person putting the following data into an input would mess things up at the other end.

DROP TABLES

this is so famous there is an XKCD comic

https://xkcd.com/327/