4 ms·

> Just want to remind everyone that only 1% of vulnerabilities are memory related in the average Joe's code. Unless your point is merely that average Joes writ

by khuey 4mo ago

> Just want to remind everyone that only 1% of vulnerabilities are memory related in the average Joe's code. Unless your point is merely that average Joes write such terrible code that you don't even need memory safety issues to exploit their software, [citation needed] Google says memory safety issues are 75% of exploited zero days. (https://security.googleblog.com/2024/10/safer-with-google-advancing-memory.html https://security.googleblog.com/2024/10/safer-with-google-ad...)

kalaksi 4mo ago
And at least in Chromium project, half of those memory safety issues are use-after-free: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safety/ https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet...
- jurschreuder 4mo ago
  Then you're looking at very old data, recent top 500 CVE's 100% of the use-after-free exploits where escalation to Admin on Windows.
bbippin 4mo ago
The point is that memory issues are a smallish number of issue compared to the larger ecosystem of vulnerabilities, and choosing to port everything to Rust is like over-optimizing. Well, that’s my 2 cents. For a language as ugly as Rust, my thought is that people should actually be using Ada, and have a mathematically provable correctness angle; not just a replacement for C/C++ with memory safety.
- khuey 4mo ago
  > The point is that memory issues are a smallish number of issue compared to the larger ecosystem of vulnerabilities If memory safety issues are 75% of exploited zero days it sounds to me like they're the biggest issue in the ecosystem by far.
  - bbippin 4mo ago
    Perhaps. But what percentage of exploits are actually zero days versus, say, 10 days or 100 days? Most exploited code probably exists in the application layer in a high-level, memory safe language. I would wager that but I don’t have time to cite ten papers on HN.
  - jurschreuder 4mo ago
    In highly specific programs like browser sandboxes. Not in things like wordpress plugins or nodejs servers.
- jabl 4mo ago
  Rust and Ada are about equally safe, both have advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps you're thinking about SPARK ADA, but that's a different kettle of fish. It's a bit like saying you should program in C, because formal verification tool X generates C code hence C is safe.
  - bbippin 4mo ago
    Yeah SPARK ADA is what I meant :) I think formal verification is the way to go with AI moving forward.
  - afdbcreid 4mo ago
    Rust and non-SPARK Ada are not equally safe. Ada is unsafe in the presence of data races, and also has runtime checks that slow it down, or you disable them and then it's even less safe.
- sunshowers 4mo ago
  Rust is a beautiful language. Gorgeous.
afdbcreid 4mo ago
My understanding is that they claim that the average Joe writes code in a garbage-collected memory-safe language. Which is... true? but irrelevant. Such applications are not suggested to be ported to Rust. Of course, some people still do that, because they like Rust; but that's their personal choice.
- jurschreuder 4mo ago
  PHP is garbage collected for reference. So rewriting wordpress plugins in Rust would not make them more secure but rewriting HAProxy or Nginx would? It's delusional.
  - fragmede 4mo ago
    If the class of bugs WordPress has is different from the class of bugs HAProxy/Nginx, eg SQl injection vs buffer overflow, then why is a different mehtoyof fixing "delusional"?
wahern 4mo ago
Most memory bugs in Chromium are in V8, either entirely in the JIT or at the boundary with C++. Rust wouldn't help here because the borrow checker can't see through these boundaries, and it's precisely this opacity where the developers also lose track of things. Which isn't to say Rust wouldn't have caught many of the other memory safety issues, but 75% is horribly misleading.
- jurschreuder 4mo ago
  In Chromium which is the condom of the internet, already millions of developer hours of the most highly paid developers have spent their days trying to make it water tight. This is not your average software project.
jurschreuder 4mo ago
Google Chromium but not it's not even in the top 10 of vulnerabilities in Github

by khuey 4mo ago

kalaksi 4mo ago

And at least in Chromium project, half of those memory safety issues are use-after-free: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safety/ https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet...

jurschreuder 4mo ago
Then you're looking at very old data, recent top 500 CVE's 100% of the use-after-free exploits where escalation to Admin on Windows.

bbippin 4mo ago

The point is that memory issues are a smallish number of issue compared to the larger ecosystem of vulnerabilities, and choosing to port everything to Rust is like over-optimizing. Well, that’s my 2 cents. For a language as ugly as Rust, my thought is that people should actually be using Ada, and have a mathematically provable correctness angle; not just a replacement for C/C++ with memory safety.

khuey 4mo ago
> The point is that memory issues are a smallish number of issue compared to the larger ecosystem of vulnerabilities If memory safety issues are 75% of exploited zero days it sounds to me like they're the biggest issue in the ecosystem by far.
- bbippin 4mo ago
  Perhaps. But what percentage of exploits are actually zero days versus, say, 10 days or 100 days? Most exploited code probably exists in the application layer in a high-level, memory safe language. I would wager that but I don’t have time to cite ten papers on HN.
- jurschreuder 4mo ago
  In highly specific programs like browser sandboxes. Not in things like wordpress plugins or nodejs servers.
jabl 4mo ago
Rust and Ada are about equally safe, both have advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps you're thinking about SPARK ADA, but that's a different kettle of fish. It's a bit like saying you should program in C, because formal verification tool X generates C code hence C is safe.
- bbippin 4mo ago
  Yeah SPARK ADA is what I meant :) I think formal verification is the way to go with AI moving forward.
- afdbcreid 4mo ago
  Rust and non-SPARK Ada are not equally safe. Ada is unsafe in the presence of data races, and also has runtime checks that slow it down, or you disable them and then it's even less safe.
sunshowers 4mo ago
Rust is a beautiful language. Gorgeous.

afdbcreid 4mo ago

My understanding is that they claim that the average Joe writes code in a garbage-collected memory-safe language. Which is... true? but irrelevant. Such applications are not suggested to be ported to Rust. Of course, some people still do that, because they like Rust; but that's their personal choice.

jurschreuder 4mo ago
PHP is garbage collected for reference. So rewriting wordpress plugins in Rust would not make them more secure but rewriting HAProxy or Nginx would? It's delusional.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  If the class of bugs WordPress has is different from the class of bugs HAProxy/Nginx, eg SQl injection vs buffer overflow, then why is a different mehtoyof fixing "delusional"?

wahern 4mo ago

Most memory bugs in Chromium are in V8, either entirely in the JIT or at the boundary with C++. Rust wouldn't help here because the borrow checker can't see through these boundaries, and it's precisely this opacity where the developers also lose track of things. Which isn't to say Rust wouldn't have caught many of the other memory safety issues, but 75% is horribly misleading.

jurschreuder 4mo ago
In Chromium which is the condom of the internet, already millions of developer hours of the most highly paid developers have spent their days trying to make it water tight. This is not your average software project.

jurschreuder 4mo ago

Google Chromium but not it's not even in the top 10 of vulnerabilities in Github