THE VIDEO SHELF · barcode security
DEF CON 29 - Richard Henderson - Old MacDonald Had a Barcode, E I E I CAR
A DEF CON 29 talk by Richard Henderson about encoding the EICAR antivirus test string into QR codes and barcodes and scanning them at real systems. Many systems that do not expect such input misbehave or collapse, including a parking garage system.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN commenters recommend it as an entertaining demonstration of how scanners and antivirus software fail on unexpected input.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- DEFCONConference
- Topic
- barcode security
- Format
- talk
- Level
- intermediate
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 4
- HN mentions in dataset
- 6
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2021–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Richard Henderson had a talk at the last Defcon about QR codes. I'd recommended checking it out. Video - [VIDEO] PDF of slides - [LINK]
grapescheesee on Hacker News · 2022-02
In FBI sounds alarm as QR code usage soarsNone of this seems too terrible to handle. The title of the song can be an empty string, so use *string/Maybe string instead of string to distinguish between unset and "some idiot made the song literally untitled". I am surprised there are no songs that …
jrockway on Hacker News · 2023-11
In Horrible edge cases to consider when dealing with music (2022)There's a good DEFCON 29 presentation on this topic. [VIDEO] If you skip forward to 16m 33s you'll be treated to a lively streak of invective from the passenger of a car whose driver has just confirmed that feeding EICAR to a parking system prevents …
Full_Clark on Hacker News · 2025-06
In Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.