Skip to main content

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3.

When I have a spare moment, I usually try and think about how to test something. In fact thats not true, what I do is actually test something. It might be an app on my phone, an online tool, parking-ticket machine or search engine. Usually it is what-ever is to hand, at the time. This is a good way to practice my skills, and can take as long as I have free. In fact having only moments is beneficial, you soon get better at finding out more issues - more quickly.

For example, a few moments ago I thought I'd test Google's currency converter. If you haven't seen it, it looks like this:


You enter a value and two currencies in the format shown, and Google will give you an answer with great precision. (I haven't examined the accuracy.)

Starting from this I varied the text slightly, using "euro" instead of "EUR", also swapping "gbp" and "euro" to see how precedence affected the results. This seemed to behave as expected, but it did make me think about how Google was parsing the query. How might I confuse Google? Could I get it to misinterpret the order of the currencies?

Inspired by this question I tried typing:



This was actually the result of me pausing while typing, and observing the automatically updated search results presented by Google. I had [probably] confused the parser into trying to convert the result of my currency conversion into metric length measurements. This seemed like odd behaviour, but possibly acceptable to Google.

Next I checked how the search engine handles the reverse...



Rather than converting to Imperial measurements, Google has stayed metric, but displayed the result in millimetres. This started me thinking that this area had not been heavily tested - or at least had not been a focus for bug fixing. I'd found two unexpected behaviours, albeit slight, in seconds.

So how could I use this to highlight something that may confuse users or undermine the confidence that a user might have in this product. If this was my product, I'd want to know about such issues, as they might be bad for business.

The next thing I tried was deliberately aimed at being typical if not a semantically perfect query, that Google might misinterpret. I used the '/' character. Commonly used informally to mean English OR.




This result was interesting. I can imagine a user typing this query, or copying similar text into Google. This seems like it would be a problem for some users, If only because its confusing. For many users it would seem Google is 'broken', especially those unfamiliar with imperial measurements. I'll stop documenting the process there, but the leads generated in these quick tests suggest more avenues of investigation. Its clearly easy to confuse the search engine's parser.

If I'd created these tests in advance, be that in a spreadsheet or test automation, how would I have jumped from one result to the next? By taking out the feedback-loop, I would have unlikely known to try those tests. I also would probably be still writing the tests, long after the point in time I had found the above information, and was on my way to finding more.

Comments

  1. Pete, thanks for sharing, not only it is interesting and made me laugh... but finally I know how much a centimeter costs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome! this is a great blog post

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Betting in Testing

“I’ve completed my testing of this feature, and I think it's ready to ship” “Are you willing to bet on that?” No, Don't worry, I’m not going to list various ways you could test the feature better or things you might have forgotten. Instead, I recommend you to ask yourself that question next time you believe you are finished.  Why? It might cause you to analyse your belief more critically. We arrive at a decision usually by means of a mixture of emotion, convention and reason. Considering the question of whether the feature and the app are good enough as a bet is likely to make you use a more evidence-based approach. Testing is gambling with your time to find information about the app. Why do I think I am done here? Would I bet money/reputation on it? I have a checklist stuck to one of my screens, that I read and contemplate when I get to this point. When you have considered the options, you may decide to check some more things or ship the app

Test Engineers, counsel for... all of the above!

Sometimes people discuss test engineers and QA as if they were a sort of police force, patrolling the streets of code looking for offences and offenders. While I can see the parallels, the investigation, checking the veracity of claims and a belief that we are making things safer. The simile soon falls down. But testers are not on the other side of the problem, we work alongside core developers, we often write code and follow all the same procedures (pull requests, planning, requirements analysis etc) they do. We also have the same goals, the delivery of working software that fulfills the team’s/company's goals and avoids harm. "A few good men" a great courtroom drama, all about finding the truth. Software quality, whatever that means for you and your company is helped by Test Engineers. Test Engineers approach the problem from another vantage point. We are the lawyers (& their investigators) in the court-room, sifting the evidence, questioning the facts and viewing t

XSS and Open Redirect on Telegraph.co.uk Authentication pages

I recently found a couple of security issues with the Telegraph.co.uk website. The site contained an Open redirect as well as an XSS vulnerability. These issues were in the authentication section of the website, https://auth.telegraph.co.uk/ . The flaws could provide an easy means to phish customer details and passwords from unsuspecting users. I informed the telegraph's technical management, as part of a responsible disclosure process. The telegraph management forwarded the issue report and thanked me the same day. (12th May 2014) The fix went live between the 11th and 14th of July, 2 months after the issue was reported. The details: The code served via auth.telegraph.co.uk appeared to have 2 vulnerabilities, an open redirect and a reflected Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability. Both types of vulnerabilty are in the OWASP Top 10 and can be used to manipulate and phish users of a website. As well has potentially hijack a user's session. Compromised URLs, that exp