Learning via Stupid Fun

Happy Father’s Day!

I spent all of yesterday trolling DBC in various ways. It was SUPER fun and I learned a lot.

Stealing Cookies

Thanks to a really fantastic lecture on web security given by one of our instructors, myself and one of my classmates were able to mimic his techniques and log into the school’s system as its founder. Basically, there were a couple of factors that went into being able to hack into this page, most of them coincidental to some of the changes that are happening at this particular time, and to us already having less broad access to the system.

I am honestly not too impressed with the fact that we were able to do it- Matt posted a video copy of his lecture to the page we were hacking into, so it was easy enough to follow his instructions and get it. But, it’s a complicated process, so at the very least I’m proud of my ability to follow the process. And it was super fun.

Trolling my Colleagues’ Workflow

I also had a ton of fun figuring out how to initiate this magnificent gem whenever any commits are made from the school computers, you know, as a way of giving positive reinforcement. Commit early and often!

The way I set it up is dependent on the commits being made to a repo that was init’ed or cloned after I set up the “hack”… but it’s still pretty fantastic. So far, I’ve gotten mixed feedback, but only one person has asked how. If anyone else does, I’ll now have someplace to point them.

How to setup Global Git Hooks

Here are some resources that helped me:

1. This webpage was good for understanding git hooks in the first place
2. Here is a practical example of a pre-commit hook- it’s also a useful tutorial for understanding git hooks.
3. This website was useful to understanding how global git hooks work
4. But these instructions were easier to follow practically speaking
5. This is a really great gem that works as good positive re-inforcement in a post-commit hook

TADA!

Any feedback/questions are welcome!