Exploiting Software How to Break Code

Chapter 6. Crafting (Malicious) Input

As we have emphasized more than once thus far, the most interesting sorts of computational machinery are complex and therefore difficult to measure. Universal Turing machines, although themselves simple mechanisms of tapes, states, and readers, can compute incredibly intricate grammars. In theory, a Turing machine is capable of running any program that runs on today's most complicated computers. The problem is that understanding a real program in Turing machine terms (states, tape movements, and so forth) is not very useful. The level of explanation of a Turing machine exists at the wrong level and lacks in “big-picture” quality. Thus, the notion of what's really going on gets swamped by “irrelevant” detail. ...