Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam • Hacker News Board

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#121

Post by socmag » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

hamburglar wrote: post #105

socmag wrote: post #92

I live and love in Amsterdam and Golang seems to be the quintessential hipster language for this quintessentially hipster city. Booking.com's soup du jour if you will. Basically, if you aren't using JavaScript in a web shop, and you claim to be a "full-stack" "ninja", then probably you are using Go around here as a jobbing programmer. I know that sounds terribly cynical and obviously a massive generalization but that…

> Developers, please suck it up, get over it and learn C/C++ and some variation of Lisp. I've got over 20 years of writing production C/C++ under my belt and I know Lisp. So I've "sucked it up." Am I allowed to like Go now? It never ceases to amaze me how many people are bothered about other people's taste in something so mundane. If you don't enjoy programming in Go, don't do it. I personally think it feels light an…

Sure, what you say is true but equally so or better for .Net or Java as well, plus they are generally faster and in the case of C# a better language imho. Why not them?

You are right, the standard library is a pleasure to work with in Golang and for the most part I trust it, but hey anything you can do in that library is easily reproducible in more or less any other mainstream language.

I really don't have an axe to grind with the language itself, it's a fun and productive thing to use for sure.

My main problem is with people who spend most of their time writing customer service applications thinking that the same language they are ultra successful with in that space is suddenly appropriate for writing systems software, because, ughh "safety"?

There is a heck of a lot more to safety than buffer overruns, and if you can't formalize abstractions for dealing with memory usage patterns, one might argue you have no business writing Tor in the first place.

Hah well compared to C/C++ dependency management, Golang does pretty darn well!

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#122

Post by Groxx » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 10:51 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #103

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, Java?

Kind of, but with more `strings.hasSuffix(...)` and less `new StringComparatorFactory(new StringSubsetComparison(), StringComparisonPositions.END_POSITION, ...`

Give it time, Go is still pretty new and requires reinventing all those wheels and flexibility-allowances. It's already visible in some areas though - e.g. look at the hoops you have to code through to allow decent unit testing of controller-style code. Anything of interest has to be exported and injected, or you simply can't do it. Even Java's significantly better here with its runtime manipulation.

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#123

Post by giancarlostoro » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 10:52 PM UTC

sfilargi wrote: post #20

As a mere average user of computer languages, every time I play around with Go I start wondering how a language like this became so popular. It feels like it was invented in a universe where Haskell, OCaml, Erlang, Smalltalk, Lisp and so many more languages and research in languages never happened.

The success for Go was in the out of the box libraries, and by this I mean you didn't have to "pip install" , "npm install", "nuget install" - no idea what the command is for nuget, always used the GUI, but you get the idea... For example when I was trying to learn Go for the first time I saw how easy it is to dive into Web Development. I can just import a package that came with Go itself, and I would be good. I think also the way it pulls in packages is part of it's success as well. It's not a traditional package manager (yet) but it worked. You put in a repository from the web and it pulls it, it made sharing and reusing code really easy. I never had issues just running Go code either if it was a codebase that was full of mostly Go code.

Btw I don't consider myself a Go developer, at work I use C# and Python. I would love to learn Rust, used to be the other way around, but I've lost hope in Go and have taken a second look at Rust, I love the direction Rust is going overall, but I understand why Go got so popular so quickly, it came at the right time with the right amount of working parts.

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#124

Post by burntsushi » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 10:54 PM UTC

riking wrote: post #63

steveklabnik wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

go -> C calls have gotten way way cheaper in newer versions of Go. There's still overhead but it's not as bad as it used to be.

It's still absolutely terrible in terms of ergonomics. You're forced to perform manual memory management, etc. I've done it a few times and I absolutely don't recommend it.

Finalizers help with memory management in the simple cases.

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#125

Post by viraptor » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 10:57 PM UTC

I like their approach of chipping away pieces instead of porting the whole system. It will result in better modularity and some generic libraries that can be used by other people. Seems like a win-win.

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#126

Post by bitexploder » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #15

Since bitexploder asked, I'll add what I wrote on this on other forums. If it's about secrets or anonymity, make sure you always use a safe language that supports careful control and reasoning about both memory and CPU time. The reason is that this enables covert, channel analysis for vulnerabilities that leak secrets through storage and timing. It's why I wanted Freenet to ditch Java aside from the obvious reasons.…

I get the side channel concerns, but most developers make a mess of languages that let you control these things. A few, very few, people I trust to write in a language like C build tools I trust (Dan B, etc). I also think it is very hard to convince folks about side channel concerns.

We have to live in the world we have too (e.g. Signal on an Android is better than not having it, etc.). When I document side channel issues in customer code there is almost some way higher priority issue they have to fix first, etc. But your advice is good for someone endeavoring to do a "correct" approach from the ground up.

Thanks for the detailed thoughts though. This is the sort of thinking anyone who thinks "I will write a secure chat program" has to do ages before they start writing code.

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#127

Post by kem » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

JepZ wrote: post #100

sfilargi wrote: post #20

As a mere average user of computer languages, every time I play around with Go I start wondering how a language like this became so popular. It feels like it was invented in a universe where Haskell, OCaml, Erlang, Smalltalk, Lisp and so many more languages and research in languages never happened.

When you talk about Go I think you should start with C. One of my professors used to tell us, that C was built by people who wanted to use it and didn't care about academic style. In many ways Go is just the next step of C. C did not have object orientation and even passing functions around was kinda hard. While C++ tried to bring object orientation to C (total failure) Go decided to keep the core values of C and ins…

I wish people understood this better.

I'm not a Go programmer, but I have a lot of respect for it.

If you're wondering "why Go"? Think of it as a modern version of C, at a slightly higher level, developed by the same people for slightly higher-level tasks. They made C for low-level stuff, and then picked up with Go for higher-level stuff. It's like C+.

C has been very successful in part because it's so simple in certain respects (although not in others) and I think Go will be successful for many of the same reasons. Go does what it does very well.

I think Rust is actually a great choice for something like Tor, but I wouldn't use Rust for some of the things I'd use Go for.

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#128

Post by nickpsecurity » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 11:01 PM UTC

bluejekyll wrote: post #90

nickpsecurity wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you it's overly verbose even though quite a bit of it was justifiable. The theory of Ada's designers was that people read software more than write it. So, the syntax should be designed to facilitate catching errors in maintenance mode, during extensions, or during integrations. It's done phenomenal at that per industrial, case studies despite having been invented in the 80's when lots of language decisions…

> I keep thinking a different language that acts as a front end w/ a better syntax might be a good idea... Also, a seemless FFI for C libraries like Julia's. You mean Rust I think ;)

People have had a hard time learning Rust. I also get gripes about its inconsistency in language syntax. The FFI I hear is good. It certainly doesn't output to SPARK or a C subset designed for easy, static analysis.

So, Rust ain't the Ada makeover Im thinking about. It's also in a stability-oriented freeze of existing design right now. So, the makeover will need to be a different language.

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#129

Post by ianopolous » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 11:05 PM UTC

Sanddancer wrote: post #115

ianopolous wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G'day Nick! Java is getting an AOT compiler in July (Graal, http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/295 ) that will let you AOT compile parts, or all, of your program, including the JVM modules themselves. This would seem to leave the GC as the main source of side channel vulnerabilities. The GC itself will become more pluggable as well, with a pure Java implementation. What requirements would you put on a GC for side channel s…

A concurrent GC running on a single processor machine is still going to pause. There are still other ways to get into situations where an attacker can cause the gc to kick in in ways where you can get information -- find a few CPU-heavy functions that nudge the GC to kick in when and where you want it. Harder, but even a background GC can wiggle into the foreground.

Even a statically compiled program run on a single core machine will pause because of the OS scheduler. Assuming we have a multicore cpu then one core can be dedicated to the GC.

Re: Tor in a safer language: Network team update from Amsterdam

#130

Post by generic_user » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 11:05 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #114

ASinclair wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a mere average user of computer languages, every time I play around with Go I start wondering how a language like this became so popular. You can pick it up in a weekend. A lower entry bar means more people will try it out. > It feels like it was invented in a universe where Haskell, OCaml, Erlang, Smalltalk, Lisp and so many more languages and research in languages never happened. It was developed in a large en…

IIUC Pike spent most of his career in research right ?

A non commercial University research group and commercial Corporation research group can be focused on solving very different problems.

I think Pike and the other designers skew more towards corporate research (Bell Labs). And surely the development of GO as well as other Google research projects are intended to win in the market place.