A new Linux vulnerability known as ‘Looney Tunables’ enables local attackers to gain root privileges by exploiting a buffer overflow weakness in the GNU C Library’s ld.so dynamic loader.
It’s certainly why it is being used to build browsers and OSs now. Those are places were memory management problems are a huge problem. It probably doesn’t make sense for every match 3 game to be made in Rust, but when errors cause massive breaches or death, it’s a lot safer than C++, taking human faulability into account.
Question would be rather: why is something like C++ needed for such simple apps?
C++ seems to be in that weird in-between place of offering high level features to be reasonable productive, but still doesn’t enforce/guarantee anything to make these features safe. I’d argue, very few programs need that. Either you’re writing business stuff, then you want safety (Java, C#, rust), or you’re writing embedded/low level stuff, then you want control (C, ASM).
The room for “productive, but not interested in safety” is basically just AAA games, I guess.
Well you’re not going to write asm if you want your code to be portable at all, and believe it or not C++ has a lot of features to help you not shoot yourself in the foot that C doesn’t have (ex. OOP, RAII, smart pointers).
C wasn’t really designed with dynamic memory management in mind. It was designed for someone who has absolute control over a machine and all the memory in it. malloc() and free() are just functions that some environments expose to user mode processes, but C was never designed to care where you got your memory or what you do with it.
That was the what I was thinking of when I wrote the comment. The CTO of Azure also said that he deems C++ in it’s entirety to be deprecated. I felt it was an exaggeration at first but I’ve started to agree with him recently.
Google also noticed a 33% decrease in Google Home crashes caused by NullPointerExceptions after switching to Kotlin. They have also declared Kotlin to be the preferred language for android.
It seems like the industry is shifting towards “safer” languages.
I see this becoming required in the future for new projects and solutions when working for new governnent solutions. The drum is certainly beating louder in the media about it.
It’s always memory management
No wonder everyone’s crazy about Rust.
It’s certainly why it is being used to build browsers and OSs now. Those are places were memory management problems are a huge problem. It probably doesn’t make sense for every match 3 game to be made in Rust, but when errors cause massive breaches or death, it’s a lot safer than C++, taking human faulability into account.
Question would be rather: why is something like C++ needed for such simple apps?
C++ seems to be in that weird in-between place of offering high level features to be reasonable productive, but still doesn’t enforce/guarantee anything to make these features safe. I’d argue, very few programs need that. Either you’re writing business stuff, then you want safety (Java, C#, rust), or you’re writing embedded/low level stuff, then you want control (C, ASM).
The room for “productive, but not interested in safety” is basically just AAA games, I guess.
C is almost the old “steady” standard now it feels like. It’s so flexible and the frameworks are already built…
…except that we also end up with cracks in our foundations like this exploit constantly being exposed as a result of all that C
Well you’re not going to write asm if you want your code to be portable at all, and believe it or not C++ has a lot of features to help you not shoot yourself in the foot that C doesn’t have (ex. OOP, RAII, smart pointers).
C wasn’t really designed with dynamic memory management in mind. It was designed for someone who has absolute control over a machine and all the memory in it.
malloc()
andfree()
are just functions that some environments expose to user mode processes, but C was never designed to care where you got your memory or what you do with it.What makes rust so resiliant against these types of atacks?
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But it’s harder and easier to spot.
You’ll never be 100% safe, but a proper lock is better than a “plz no steal” note.
Yes, it was just discovered on this year’s POPL that rust’s type system is not sound with respect to deadlock freedom.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3571229
(of course this is not arguing that everyone should stay on C or CPP, just confirming the point that Rust will allow stupid things.
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Didn’t Microsoft do a study on security vulnerabilities and found that the overwhelmingly number of bugs was due to memory management?
I think you’re referring to this: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/
That was the what I was thinking of when I wrote the comment. The CTO of Azure also said that he deems C++ in it’s entirety to be deprecated. I felt it was an exaggeration at first but I’ve started to agree with him recently.
Google also noticed a 33% decrease in Google Home crashes caused by NullPointerExceptions after switching to Kotlin. They have also declared Kotlin to be the preferred language for android.
It seems like the industry is shifting towards “safer” languages.
I’m not in America but the organisation for NIST recommends it in guidance now and its getting backing by the nsa
https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/News-Highlights/Article/Article/3215760/nsa-releases-guidance-on-how-to-protect-against-software-memory-safety-issues/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-to-developers-think-about-switching-from-c-and-c-to-a-memory-safe-programming-language/ https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2022/11/nsa-guidance-on-how-to-avoid-software-memory-safety-issues
I see this becoming required in the future for new projects and solutions when working for new governnent solutions. The drum is certainly beating louder in the media about it.
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See? All code sucks.