To underscore your general point: You're totally right. But... a but: Implicit type conversions in C are cumbersome. In javascript for example, they are way mo

To underscore your general point: You're totally right. But... a but: Implicit type conversions in C are cumbersome. In javascript for example, they are way more. If javascript had a similar role (i.e. bare metal code), the world would be way messier than it already is. Languages without strict type checking are in general open to problems like this, more or less depending on the leniency to check potential type error. C, being a bare-metal language is especially ugly since it allows to cast anything to anything else, granted - but is is spottable, reviewable and, for new code, you won't get away with ugly casts. In javascript you don't even see casts, they just happen. Still, javascript doesn't have an unsigned integer, so this attack vector would not work.