Earlier quoted context omitted.
Javascript, that the exploit uses, is a memory safe language too, at lest in theory... None of the languages around, that are in major production use, are really completely memory safe in practise. There is always a runtime lurking under it, most times a libc (not in Go tho, IIRC) and assortment of various libraries written in memory unsafe languages and always a kernel. While it's probably harder to exploit Go, as,…
Javascript is used to perform the exploit. The renderer, where the vulnerable code exists (I assume), is C++. The problem with protecting a C++ codebase like a JS renderer is that the attacker has HUGE amounts of control. They can literally already execute arbitrary code in the renderer, making information leaks and other techniques much easier. ASLR was never intended to protect against an attacker with such a level…
Yes, that way my point. There is a runtime and/or VM and/or stdlib under these "memory safe" languages and these things are never fully written in memory safe languages themselves, at least as far as the current state of affairs goes. And even then, they run on insecure hardware (rowhammer and spectre anybody?).
Would using a language with better memory safety and other guarantees like Rust be better to write these things? Most certainly, as the attack surface becomes smaller and e.g. Rust would prevent a lot of programming mistakes in the first place. Would that be a complete silver bullet, tho? Nope.
So I agree with you that using a language with C++ isn't exactly "optimal" to implement these runtimes that are meant to run untrusted code. I just didn't like that the OP declared "memory safe languages like Go" to be a silver bullet.
>ASLR was never intended to protect against an attacker with such a level of control.
ASLR is not a protection. It's an additional roadblock put in place to make things harder for attackers once shit already hit the fan.