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>Even your fairly simple heuristic that works in most cases is easy to screw up due to a typo / brain fart, This argument can be made for "safer" languages jus

>Even your fairly simple heuristic that works in most cases is easy to screw up due to a typo / brain fart, This argument can be made for "safer" languages just as easily. Most of the web exploits that exist, like request smuggling, parser abuse, or generic exploit involving a sequence of API calls, are all due to brain farts. At a certain level you have to expect some competency. My main argument is that the competency for writing C code isn't that much higher than for other languages.

Nursie 6y ago
> My main argument is that the competency for writing C code isn't that much higher than for other languages. I think that goes against observed reality, and the consequences of these errors are worse in unsafe languages. Look at heartbleed - a bounds-checked language would not have allowed that problem to be anything more than an exception, instead process memory was open for reading.
- ActorNightly 6y ago
  Easy counterexample: most of the computers worldwide run Linux kernel, which is written in C, and kernel exploits, especially those that are accessible from the web, are significantly rarer compared to the higher level exploits in CRUD APIs or LAMP stacks that work on the http protocol level and the authentication state machines. This argument doesn't make sense. Yes, programmers make mistakes. Yes, they shouldn't make those mistakes. My point is that its not difficult to write safe C code if you follow some basic rules.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    > Easy counterexample: The linux kernel is not really a counterexample here, and neither would I call the decades of security hardening that's gone into it "easy"... > Yes, programmers make mistakes. And in some languages those mistakes have far worse consequences than others, and more types of mistakes are possible. > My point is that its not difficult to write safe C code if you follow some basic rules. Except it is more difficult, for a start because you have more rules and tools needed to make it safe, if that's even possible. As you yourself have said.

Nursie 6y ago

> My main argument is that the competency for writing C code isn't that much higher than for other languages. I think that goes against observed reality, and the consequences of these errors are worse in unsafe languages. Look at heartbleed - a bounds-checked language would not have allowed that problem to be anything more than an exception, instead process memory was open for reading.

ActorNightly 6y ago
Easy counterexample: most of the computers worldwide run Linux kernel, which is written in C, and kernel exploits, especially those that are accessible from the web, are significantly rarer compared to the higher level exploits in CRUD APIs or LAMP stacks that work on the http protocol level and the authentication state machines. This argument doesn't make sense. Yes, programmers make mistakes. Yes, they shouldn't make those mistakes. My point is that its not difficult to write safe C code if you follow some basic rules.
- Nursie 6y ago
  > Easy counterexample: The linux kernel is not really a counterexample here, and neither would I call the decades of security hardening that's gone into it "easy"... > Yes, programmers make mistakes. And in some languages those mistakes have far worse consequences than others, and more types of mistakes are possible. > My point is that its not difficult to write safe C code if you follow some basic rules. Except it is more difficult, for a start because you have more rules and tools needed to make it safe, if that's even possible. As you yourself have said.