EPISODE · Aug 10, 2025 · 18 MIN
Race conditions, transactions and free parking (WHY2025)
from Chaos Computer Club - recent audio-only feed · host Benjamin W. Broersma
ORM's and/or developers don't understand databases, transactions, or concurrency. After the [Air France-KLM dataleak](https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-lightningtalks-58027-air-france-klm-6-char-short-code) I kept repeating this was not a real hack, and confessed I always wanted to hack a system based on triggering race conditions because the lack of proper transactions. This was way easier than expected. In this talk I will show how just adding `$ seq 0 9 | xargs -I@ -P10 ..` can break some systems, and how to write safe database transactions that prevent abuse. In this talk I will explain what race conditions are. Many examples of how and why code will fail. How to properly create a database transaction. The result of abusing this in real life (e.g. free parking). Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://program.why2025.org/why2025/talk/EYKRPS/
What this episode covers
ORM's and/or developers don't understand databases, transactions, or concurrency. After the [Air France-KLM dataleak](https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-lightningtalks-58027-air-france-klm-6-char-short-code) I kept repeating this was not a real hack, and confessed I always wanted to hack a system based on triggering race conditions because the lack of proper transactions. This was way easier than expected. In this talk I will show how just adding `$ seq 0 9 | xargs -I@ -P10 ..` can break some systems, and how to write safe database transactions that prevent abuse. In this talk I will explain what race conditions are. Many examples of how and why code will fail. How to properly create a database transaction. The result of abusing this in real life (e.g. free parking). Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://program.why2025.org/why2025/talk/EYKRPS/
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Race conditions, transactions and free parking (WHY2025)
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