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> The X.509 certificate format and concepts are directly used today by TLS and other cryptographic implementations, including its string representations (length
by comex 6y ago
> The X.509 certificate format and concepts are directly used today by TLS and other cryptographic implementations, including its string representations (length-prefixed) which were a decent choice at the time but now quite strange considering the complete victory of null-terminated representations.
Er, what? What network protocols even use nul-terminated strings?
Even if this is referring to programming languages’ native string types, nul termination only won in C, while just about every other language uses some kind of explicit length encoding.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoIndeed, and between buffer overruns and "accidental quadratics", null terminated strings gaining widespread adoption in core system APIs are probably the biggest and most expensive mistake of computing industry.
- avodonosov 6y agoI wanted to question this phrase too - length prefixing is so common in network communications