I once read a story on Reddit about a payroll processor with an utterly unholy mess of a system. One day, they get a customer called "Select", and the entire system stopped working.
This isn't SQL, but HP printers' settings protocol uses XML and doesn't escape Wi-Fi SSIDs, so it breaks completely whenever any nearby SSID includes < or >. Which wouldn't be a massive problem, except for that Com Hem (our Comcast) has set their default SSID to COMHEM<(start of router MAC)>.
There's the stories of people named Null that make various systems crash or reject them, probably because they coerce to strings before checking for a "null" value.
Is this even real? I can only imagine the look at the chambers of commerce when somebody registered this.
Also, this looks a typical system that would be vulnerable to this. At least where I live the details are always entered by a clerk, the systems are old and were never meant to be used directly by outside parties.
In all seriousness, doesn't this cause problems for you when registering for bank accounts, or trying to do any business activity with your company name? I think the whole thing is hilarious, I just can't believe it seems like you're actually using the company!
Haha! Yes, that reaction happens a lot - a friend tried to discourage me from doing it actually for that reason, but I told him I'd just rename it if it became burdensome. So far it has only been a little bit burdensome.
Bank account was actually incredibly easy, that is the one I expected to be difficult, too. I had no problems at all, I made an account with the usual process. Should note I'm using one of those new-fangled 'challenger banks' so they're probably quite tech savvy/their systems aren't 50 years old, that probably helped.
The worst one has been the domain name, oddly. I wanted to get the .ltd.uk domain name (only available to registered companies in the UK) to basically complete/highlight the joke. But, I have been waiting for over a year or something now for it to actually be registered, it keeps being rejected by the registrar (there is a weird validation process to make sure you're a real company, etc). I could have sped it up by trying with a better registrar who are more aggressive at getting things done, probably, I had a few offers from smaller registrars - but I just went for the .co.uk in the end instead.
