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Large swathes of C code can't have an RCE by definition. Any C code which is not available on the network (e.g. C code running on your refrigerator) by definit

Large swathes of C code can't have an RCE by definition. Any C code which is not available on the network (e.g. C code running on your refrigerator) by definition cannot have a remote code execution vulnerability. Lots of software, such as the 'top' utility, makes no networking related calls in the codebase, so any instances of bugs would be buffer overflows or crashes, but not remotely exploitable by the usual meaning. I think that you vastly under-estimate how difficult it is to accidentally write a remotely exploitable bug. Sure, buffer overflows and undefined behavior happen all the time in C code. Those bugs might be 1 per 100 lines even in the average C code. of those, hardly any will be network exploitable. Relatively little code will be handling data sourced from the network.

pizlonator 8y ago
That's sort of literally true except that it's hard to predict how code will be used in the future. For example, I bet that some dude writing an image decoder in the 90's was thinking "it's cool, I don't have to worry about security" because he just knew that his code wasn't going to be remotely exploitable. Anyway, my original comment was supposed to be as funny as your handle. I guess the humor ended up being just in how seriously folks took it. The part I'm not joking about is that folks always underestimate the amount of security bugs that will be found in a piece of code in the future, either because the code ends up used in a way that wasn't predicted, or because some really great bug was just waiting for the right kind of genius to uncover it.