## Unauthorized Windows 95 Update -- RUSSROUL

RUSSROUL.C and RUSSROUL.EXE -- "Russian Roulette" is a Win32 program. To simulate a buggy program with an uninitialized pointer, RussRoul generates random pointers. It tries to write (poke) each randomly-generated pointer, thereby simulating a buggy program that writes through an uninitialized pointer (a common bug). For each randomly-generated pointer, RussRoul will ask you to press ENTER before trying to write to the pointer.

RussRoul will keep doing this until the program is halted with a GP Fault (this is what SHOULD happen in a genuine protected operating system with private address spaces), or until the operating system crashes or hangs.

In Windows 95, it usually won't take very long (less than a dozen random writes, generally) before the system crashes or hangs. (Hence this program's name, "Russian Roulette.") Worse, sometimes the program will trash away at memory for a long time without crashing the system: this is worse than crashing, because it means that silent memory corruption is occurring.

The O'Reilly Windows Center

Unauthorized Windows 95 Update