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Is the trade off here having more secure code in exchange for added complexity/difficulty? This is a real question, has the Tor code itself been exploited by ba

Is the trade off here having more secure code in exchange for added complexity/difficulty? This is a real question, has the Tor code itself been exploited by bad actors before? All the incedences I've seen in the news were some other software running over tor that would be exploited to phone home or give up user data.

uecker 11mo ago
It seems they worry about it, which I can understand. But now with Rust I worry about about new logic bugs, supply chain issues, and lack of proper security updates.
- steveklabnik 11mo ago
  Well, given that this has been going on for years, you can already start to empirically evaluate that question.
  - yjdiquhf 11mo ago
    > (So far, it's a not-very-complete client. But watch this space!)
    - steveklabnik 11mo ago
      Yes, it's a beginning not the end. Or, you could look at other projects who have been using Rust for many years, and consider these factors there too. The folks who have have generally concluded the opposite.
      - yjdiquhf 11mo ago
        [flagged]
      - ue7gjelwjd 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        steveklabnik 11mo ago
        Do you think the sibling comment was flagged to "protect me" whatever that means, or is it because "Are you high on Prozac?" is not really a productive comment? EDIT: And now that I've scrolled down, I see you've left this comment many times as random replies. I'm sure those will get flagged, but for spam reasons, not due to some grand conspiracy.
      - uecker 11mo ago
        The distribution I use already has limited security updates for Rust: https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.en.html#go-and-rust-based-packages https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.... which reduces my security. The cargo supply chain issues are also very obvious, I am far more worried about this than I ever will be about memory safety, but hopefully tor reduces its reliance on random dependencies.
        steveklabnik 11mo ago
        I find that surprising given that Debian breaks Rust programs up into individual apt packages, but ultimately, other distros do not have this issue. It’s also about userspace programs and not the kernel, which does not use external packages and so sidesteps this completely. Debian forky has Rust in the kernel on by default.
        uecker 11mo ago
        I guess the want to be able to update individual libraries to provide security updates.
        steveklabnik 11mo ago
        Right, from my understanding, Debian was packaging Rust programs in the same way as C ones. So they’d update the individual library and it should be all good. They deduplicated all of the dependencies in their trees.
        uecker 11mo ago
        This seems reasonable to me. If you have a tarmaggeedon, you update one library instead of thousand of packages. Although I am not sure how well this can work in Rust with monomorphization.

uecker 11mo ago

It seems they worry about it, which I can understand. But now with Rust I worry about about new logic bugs, supply chain issues, and lack of proper security updates.

steveklabnik 11mo ago
Well, given that this has been going on for years, you can already start to empirically evaluate that question.
- yjdiquhf 11mo ago
  > (So far, it's a not-very-complete client. But watch this space!)
  - steveklabnik 11mo ago
    Yes, it's a beginning not the end. Or, you could look at other projects who have been using Rust for many years, and consider these factors there too. The folks who have have generally concluded the opposite.
    - yjdiquhf 11mo ago
      [flagged]
    - ue7gjelwjd 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      - steveklabnik 11mo ago
        Do you think the sibling comment was flagged to "protect me" whatever that means, or is it because "Are you high on Prozac?" is not really a productive comment? EDIT: And now that I've scrolled down, I see you've left this comment many times as random replies. I'm sure those will get flagged, but for spam reasons, not due to some grand conspiracy.
    - uecker 11mo ago
      The distribution I use already has limited security updates for Rust: https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.en.html#go-and-rust-based-packages https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.... which reduces my security. The cargo supply chain issues are also very obvious, I am far more worried about this than I ever will be about memory safety, but hopefully tor reduces its reliance on random dependencies.
      - steveklabnik 11mo ago
        I find that surprising given that Debian breaks Rust programs up into individual apt packages, but ultimately, other distros do not have this issue. It’s also about userspace programs and not the kernel, which does not use external packages and so sidesteps this completely. Debian forky has Rust in the kernel on by default.
        uecker 11mo ago
        I guess the want to be able to update individual libraries to provide security updates.
        steveklabnik 11mo ago
        Right, from my understanding, Debian was packaging Rust programs in the same way as C ones. So they’d update the individual library and it should be all good. They deduplicated all of the dependencies in their trees.
        uecker 11mo ago
        This seems reasonable to me. If you have a tarmaggeedon, you update one library instead of thousand of packages. Although I am not sure how well this can work in Rust with monomorphization.