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Why do You think creating a browser in a 'safe' language would prevent security bugs from occurring?

• hollerith 2y ago
  Because 70% of the security holes in C code bases tend to be things that never happen in a memory-safe language.
  • Xeamek 2y ago
    source?
    • dist1ll 2y ago
      From the chromium website > Around 70% of our high severity security bugs are memory unsafety problems (that is, mistakes with C/C++ pointers). Half of those are use-after-free bugs. https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safety/ https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet...
      • rvz 2y ago
        I mean, it doesn't get any more clearer that the Chromium team is already considering integrating Rust in Chromium to mitigate these sort of memory corruption vulnerabilities found in C and C++ and that is the main motivation here. [0] Given that Ladybird is yet another C/C++ browser, it will be riddled with these vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited. I don't think many here are thinking about the costs involved with security fixes and maintenance, at it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year just to keep up with Firefox alone. That is the minimum requirement for any serious competing browser. There's a clear reason why Chrome, Safari and Firefox need hundreds of millions of dollars of developer maintenance a year. [0] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/main/docs/rust.md#why https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/...
• dtx1 2y ago
  Nice Strawman. My Argument is that it takes likely 10s of millions of dollars to secure a large CPP Browser from the metric shitload of memory safety issues the average C/CPP Programmer leaves behind. If you want to compete with Google, either you use a memory safe language and spend your time securing the other millions of security issues that arise from writing a web browser or you waste time and money to build something no one in their right mind should be using for anything given the state of the modern web.
• marcus0x62 2y ago
  It might prevent 70%[0] or so of exploitable bugs. Which is better than C++, which, after almost 40 years of effort, continues to be the source of most of that 70% in the first place. 0 - https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-se...
  • Xeamek 2y ago
    That's really great that you are quoting a generalized stat, but we are taking about browsers here, which are inherently runtimes allowing anyone to run anycode they want. Just saying 'c++ bad' isn't really a serious analysis...
    • timeon 2y ago
      Are you suggesting that decreasing surface area is not worth it?
      • Xeamek 2y ago
        I am saying that 'crossing someone out' just because they decided not to opt into the tradeoff to decrease that surface is overreacting.
      • torstenvl 2y ago
        If you think it's worth it, feel free to go and do it. But that's not a reason to astroturf for Rust on a thread about Ladybird.
    • marcus0x62 2y ago
      Saying that super complex C++ code bases are less exposed to memory safety issues is what is not a serious argument. Have a nice day. Edit: here's a report from the Chromium team, if that makes you feel any better. It reports similar figures. https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safety/ https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet...
• zihotki 2y ago
  It won't prevent all, but may prevent many. Quote: If you have a very large (millions of lines of code) codebase, written in a memory-unsafe programming language (such as C or C++), you can expect at least 65% of your security vulnerabilities to be caused by memory unsafety. The quote is from https://alexgaynor.net/2020/may/27/science-on-memory-unsafety-and-security/ https://alexgaynor.net/2020/may/27/science-on-memory-unsafet...