4 ms·

NSArchiver aside, how is obj-c insecure?

• saagarjha 3y ago
  Many more instances of undefined behavior
  • azinman2 3y ago
    Such as?
• catiopatio 3y ago
  Dynamic dispatch with heavy reliance on runtime metadata is a huge attack surface in terms of being able to leverage a data bug into full control of execution. Additionally, the language provides very few runtime or static compile-time guarantees relative to Swift. This disparity grows even larger if one leverages C directly — which is both common and often necessary when writing ObjC code.
  • azinman2 3y ago
    Can you give an example exploit that goes from a data bug to full control given dynamic dispatch? Less runtime / static guarantees may mean you pass the wrong class type to a method, but typically all that happens is that that object cannot perform the right selector. I can sort of see this being slightly chained to get some mild exploit, but I’d imagine this is pretty edge condition / rare as it would need to respond to the expected selector in the right way useful for exploit. I’ve written a ton of obj-c and work in it, and almost never need or see the use of C.
• pjmlp 3y ago
  The C part of Objective-C.
  • azinman2 3y ago
    But when coding objc you don’t use the C part.
    • pjmlp 3y ago
      That would be a feat.
      • azinman2 3y ago
        In the sense that you’re calling objc methods, defining classes, never calling malloc, not creating structs, etc.