“Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#31

Post by casefields » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 2:25 AM UTC

profalseidol wrote: post #27

cj wrote: post #8

Congressman: I was really surprised about the Rust language. So my first question is, why was the Rust language chosen as the implementation language for Libra? Do you believe it's mature enough to handle the security challenges that will affect these large cryptocurrency transactions? Facebook: [We will own & control the code.] Congressman: It looks like Libra was built on the nightly build of the Rust programming l…

It's cool to see a congressman who has this level of software dev knowledge.

He's a Republican from Virginia. Former Air Force Intelligence Office and NSA contractor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Riggleman

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#32

Post by randaouser » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 2:28 AM UTC

the rust nightly build has the ECC curve functionality. Most of the crypto related prototyping on rust requires the nightly atm. Heres hoping integration onto wide release for the sake of the crypto dev community

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#33

Post by killjoywashere » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 2:34 AM UTC

sudhirj wrote: post #21

pohl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably an intern on his staff did the research.

No it sounds like he was either an engineer or engineering manager somewhere in the DoD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Riggleman

Associate of Science (AS) in Avionics Systems from the Community College of the Air Force in 1996.

Graduate Certificate (GradCert) in Project Managment from Villanova University in 2007.

Air Force for eleven years, serving as an intelligence officer. He then worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#34

Post by booleanbetrayal » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

Even if it was well-rehearsed, he's earned my respect for bringing about questions that are pointedly relevant, both materially and topically.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#35

Post by zucker42 » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 2:43 AM UTC

incompatible wrote: post #23

jdavis703 wrote: post #13

This is a good question to ask, especially about the nightly builds from upstream. There have been NPM exploits targeted at crypto currency developers (e.g. the event-stream breach), so it seems FB would be placing a lot of trust in the Rust developers. This is not to say Rust maintainers are dishonest, but all it takes is one person who's authentication credentials gets comprised.

Wouldn't the same apply to practically any programming language and development tools? What if they'd chosen Microsoft Visual C++? Would that be less exploitable?

The specific point about nightly isn't about Rust per say. It's more about using what is essentially a development version of a compiler, updated nightly. Exploits aren't necessarily even the biggest threat. Nightly could have bugs, and in the context of cryptocurrency, compiler bugs can mean large amounts of lost money.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#36

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 2:50 AM UTC

jasonhansel wrote: post #11

This congressman (or his aides) is surprisingly knowledgeable. I'm impressed with whoever thought to ask about nightly builds. Edit: for reference, this is the congressman who was accused of writing "Bigfoot erotica" during his campaign.

That edit took a real turn.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#37

Post by hsaliak » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 2:53 AM UTC

This is a deeply technical and insightful question to ask. However, is this question on implementation detail the best question he could ask to determine the impact of Libra on the people he represents, or does it serve to satisfy his curiosity?

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#38

Post by killjoywashere » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #36

jasonhansel wrote: post #11

This congressman (or his aides) is surprisingly knowledgeable. I'm impressed with whoever thought to ask about nightly builds. Edit: for reference, this is the congressman who was accused of writing "Bigfoot erotica" during his campaign.

That edit took a real turn.

He's a bigfoot nerd. He posted a stupid book on his instagram feed and his opponent tried to make him out like a weirdo. It would be like a candidate posting the cover of star wars fan fiction and their opponent accusing them of being a alien conspiracy theorist.

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#39

Post by killjoywashere » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

hsaliak wrote: post #37

This is a deeply technical and insightful question to ask. However, is this question on implementation detail the best question he could ask to determine the impact of Libra on the people he represents, or does it serve to satisfy his curiosity?

He is their elected representative. Is there a measurable difference? Should there be a measurable difference?

Re: “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?” in congressional hearing [video]

#40

Post by derefr » Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 3:13 AM UTC

Is there a reason that it matters what the reference implementation of Libra is written in?

A blockchain network is usually not considered healthy until it has multiple implementations of nodes running non-negligible parts of the network. I would say that Libra having such alternate impls is almost inevitable.

Exploiting any flaw in a particular blockchain node impl, when there are multiple such impls, would then require either finding the same vulnerability in all other clients; or else, attacking that one client, forcing a hard fork, and then having that client’s version of events “win” such that other node software choose to adopt it by hardcoding a switchover. Neither is ever very likely.