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550 points polskibus | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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locklock ◴[] No.19116039[source]
I'm really thankful I haven't yet had a job where all I'm developing is new ways to force people to see ads. Imagine working on a 'feature' like this for weeks or months, and the end result is simply that people who don't want to see ads now have to see ads.
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spyspy ◴[] No.19116323[source]
Ethics aside, this actually sounds kind of fun to me. It's the kind of clever puzzle solving many of us love about programming - it's basically a cat and mouse game.
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tenaciousDaniel ◴[] No.19116691[source]
I had a job where I had to reverse engineer broker API's. A few brokers sent us warning letters since it's technically legal but brokers obviously hate it.

That was the best cat-and-mouse game. We had a revolving door of proxies that we would use to hit their endpoints so they couldn't catch us. So much fun.

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1. matthewwiese ◴[] No.19116756[source]
In what context was this done/could you provide more details (without giving away any information that you don't care to share)? Sounds like something I would enjoy doing as well!
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2. tenaciousDaniel ◴[] No.19117714[source]
It was from a previous employer and I can't remember what I signed in my NDA, so I'd rather not put myself at risk. Sorry!
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3. tenaciousDaniel ◴[] No.19117762[source]
Although I can say that most financial institutions are not nearly as scrupulous in checking their systems as you would expect.

When I would work my way through their auth layer, I'd be sending them like 500 login requests every hour. They never contacted the account I used, so I have to assume they weren't checking for abnormalities like that.

The only time I really fucked up was when I tried to do that with a particular broker in Singapore. Singaporean companies have their shit _locked down_. I spent one hour debugging one of their endpoints, and it let off so many alarms that the CTO of their company was woken up in the middle of the night.

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4. matthewwiese ◴[] No.19119526{3}[source]
I respect the need to abide by an NDA, and I assumed something along those lines would be the case. Thanks for the tidbits nonetheless! The intersection between finance and tech at the highest levels like that has always intrigued me.