4 ms·

I think some people just need to step up instead of only evangelizing, and actually build something that is useful and "secure" Oh wait... There are actually t

I think some people just need to step up instead of only evangelizing, and actually build something that is useful and "secure" Oh wait... There are actually tons of such projects. Why did they not take off? (I'm trying hard not to sound cynical because I don't really know that there is absolutely no way that they could, but also I do feel cynical)

wyager 7y ago
> There are actually tons of such projects. Why did they not take off? Secure computing requires a relatively low time preference to be economical. Or, more precisely, marginal demand for secure computing increases with a marginal decrease in time preference. Most companies have (artificially inflated) high time preferences, so it's not economical for them to adopt what we consider secure computing. This is, I believe, to the net detriment of human society as a whole (at least, at my personal time preference). I'm not going to get too much into why time preferences are so (artificially) high on here, but I encourage people to look into it themselves. A lot of it has to do with government economic intervention, especially around monetary policy.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > A lot of it has to do with government economic intervention, especially around monetary policy. Don't single it out. Fiscal policy is as much guilty as monetary one. Even civil and criminal legislation help here.
- wbl 7y ago
  Rates are low, which signals willingness to invest long term. Are you sure you got the monetary policy right?
  - wyager 7y ago
    Long delay, but I just saw this: the availability of loans well below “natural” market rates encourages consumption now, because you can just take out a honking big loan and you won’t have to deal with the consequences for a long time. I.e. it inflates effective time preference.
pjmlp 7y ago
Someone missed the memo it seems. We are doing exactly that, in what concerns me, I switched away into managed languages back in 2006, already replaced a couple of C and C++ based solutions by .NET and Java ones. On my line of work C and C++ only have a place as means to writing bindings to OS libraries written in those languages. what can be replaced by secure languages, gets replaced. In what concerns big companies, C is persona non-grata on Windows, Azure IoT makes use of .NET and Rust, Microsoft is a big pusher for C++ static analysers, drives Checked C research, did two safe OS whose learnings got added back to .NET (async/await, Span<>, .NET Native), UWP sandboxing is merged with Win32, with upcoming Windows 10X having everything sandboxed in little pico processes. Google allows very little C and C++ code on its OSes, ChromeOS sandboxes everything, Android has probably the Linux kernel fork with most security knobs turned on, NDK has very little API surface, and Android 11 now requires hardware memory tagging for C and C++ code. Even though I don't think it is going far, Google is working on eventually use Swift for Tensorflow further developments. It remains to be seen how much C++ are they willing to replace by Swift. Apple is now since one year driving drivers outside the kernel, with the exception of DriverKit, everything else can make use of Swift as well. Very few modern macOS APIs are C or Objective-C based. Since iPhone X, iOS makes use of hardware pointer validation. Apple is also hiring Rust developers to replace C based infrastrutured on their backend. GenodeOS is written in C++, and has since one year started to migrate security critical parts to Ada/SPARK. Speaking of which, NVidia, a C++ powerhouse, is now using Ada/SPARK for security critical firmware. We, security conscious people will get there, slowly, might not be on our lifetimes, but society will be there eventually. Then again, progress only happens one person at a time.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
xorcist 7y ago
> Why did they not take off? There are lots and lots of software that is both well designed and popular. SQLite is a great example. Postfix and OpenSSH too.
- jstimpfle 7y ago
  They are written in C
- rurban 7y ago
  SQLite is well designed? Give me a break. It's an ugly and insecure hack. https://research.checkpoint.com/2019/select-code_execution-from-using-sqlite/ https://research.checkpoint.com/2019/select-code_execution-f... The meta tables declaring all table structures are changeable via SELECT and CREATE VIEW statements, the fulltext search engine still allows follows arbitrary user pointers by default. Well-designed is different. The problem is not the language, the problem is in the design.
Paianni 7y ago
I'd say the opposite is true, there isn't enough evangelising, not enough people are discovering and accessing projects where security is prioritised.
- jstimpfle 7y ago
  A project that wants to take of needs to prioritize taking off. The incentives are set. If secure computing is more inconvenient it will not be used. In my experience secure computing is a lot more inconvenient. I don't mean Haskell is inconvenient (it is). I mean like, it's way more inconvenient to write in C# or Java than it is to write in plain C if you want to get real work done.

wyager 7y ago

> There are actually tons of such projects. Why did they not take off? Secure computing requires a relatively low time preference to be economical. Or, more precisely, marginal demand for secure computing increases with a marginal decrease in time preference. Most companies have (artificially inflated) high time preferences, so it's not economical for them to adopt what we consider secure computing. This is, I believe, to the net detriment of human society as a whole (at least, at my personal time preference). I'm not going to get too much into why time preferences are so (artificially) high on here, but I encourage people to look into it themselves. A lot of it has to do with government economic intervention, especially around monetary policy.

marcosdumay 7y ago
> A lot of it has to do with government economic intervention, especially around monetary policy. Don't single it out. Fiscal policy is as much guilty as monetary one. Even civil and criminal legislation help here.
wbl 7y ago
Rates are low, which signals willingness to invest long term. Are you sure you got the monetary policy right?
- wyager 7y ago
  Long delay, but I just saw this: the availability of loans well below “natural” market rates encourages consumption now, because you can just take out a honking big loan and you won’t have to deal with the consequences for a long time. I.e. it inflates effective time preference.

pjmlp 7y ago

Someone missed the memo it seems. We are doing exactly that, in what concerns me, I switched away into managed languages back in 2006, already replaced a couple of C and C++ based solutions by .NET and Java ones. On my line of work C and C++ only have a place as means to writing bindings to OS libraries written in those languages. what can be replaced by secure languages, gets replaced. In what concerns big companies, C is persona non-grata on Windows, Azure IoT makes use of .NET and Rust, Microsoft is a big pusher for C++ static analysers, drives Checked C research, did two safe OS whose learnings got added back to .NET (async/await, Span<>, .NET Native), UWP sandboxing is merged with Win32, with upcoming Windows 10X having everything sandboxed in little pico processes. Google allows very little C and C++ code on its OSes, ChromeOS sandboxes everything, Android has probably the Linux kernel fork with most security knobs turned on, NDK has very little API surface, and Android 11 now requires hardware memory tagging for C and C++ code. Even though I don't think it is going far, Google is working on eventually use Swift for Tensorflow further developments. It remains to be seen how much C++ are they willing to replace by Swift. Apple is now since one year driving drivers outside the kernel, with the exception of DriverKit, everything else can make use of Swift as well. Very few modern macOS APIs are C or Objective-C based. Since iPhone X, iOS makes use of hardware pointer validation. Apple is also hiring Rust developers to replace C based infrastrutured on their backend. GenodeOS is written in C++, and has since one year started to migrate security critical parts to Ada/SPARK. Speaking of which, NVidia, a C++ powerhouse, is now using Ada/SPARK for security critical firmware. We, security conscious people will get there, slowly, might not be on our lifetimes, but society will be there eventually. Then again, progress only happens one person at a time.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

xorcist 7y ago

> Why did they not take off? There are lots and lots of software that is both well designed and popular. SQLite is a great example. Postfix and OpenSSH too.

jstimpfle 7y ago
They are written in C
rurban 7y ago
SQLite is well designed? Give me a break. It's an ugly and insecure hack. https://research.checkpoint.com/2019/select-code_execution-from-using-sqlite/ https://research.checkpoint.com/2019/select-code_execution-f... The meta tables declaring all table structures are changeable via SELECT and CREATE VIEW statements, the fulltext search engine still allows follows arbitrary user pointers by default. Well-designed is different. The problem is not the language, the problem is in the design.

Paianni 7y ago

I'd say the opposite is true, there isn't enough evangelising, not enough people are discovering and accessing projects where security is prioritised.

jstimpfle 7y ago
A project that wants to take of needs to prioritize taking off. The incentives are set. If secure computing is more inconvenient it will not be used. In my experience secure computing is a lot more inconvenient. I don't mean Haskell is inconvenient (it is). I mean like, it's way more inconvenient to write in C# or Java than it is to write in plain C if you want to get real work done.