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The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

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281–290 of 427 posts

Re: The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How to quit vim.

long-press power button

I can see why that would sometimes work, but the better preconfigured vim installations have a long-press of the power button remapped to a 911 call, in case the user has fallen unconscious onto the keyboard and needs medical attention.

Re: The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's perfectly simple to trash memory in Rust. What makes you think so? Most Rust programmers and programmers from other languages, agree that this is not possible. I might be missing something, but can you give an example of such simple methods to trash memory in Rust, asking from a curiosity standpoint?

I don’t think most Rust programmers agree it’s impossible at all. There’s always unsafe. I can make a pointer to anywhere by hand and write to it. That would involve some very intentional work, but I could do it if I wanted to.

There's a difference between "chamber a round, remove the safety, aim at the foot, shoot" and "open the kitchen faucet, leg gets blown off".

Re: The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

#284
post #32

I advise training programmers instead of throwing them in front of a screen without any training. Companies these days provides no training at all. When I was hired over 40 years ago, I spent plenty of time being trained for my first 3 months. Now, nothing, and you if you want to train a new person, you do it on your own time.

If (security) training worked, we wouldn’t have these issues.

Even in highly regulated, controlled environments memory safety is still an issue. I have seen bugs in these environments where I know for a fact that the developer has had 40-80 hours of training on memory safety and they still pop up.

If these people have occasional issues, the rest of the world has no effin chance.

Re: The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

#285
post #6

Their "Appendix: Memory Safe Languages" lists: C#, Go, Java, Python, Rust & Swift

Why is Python listed there and not other languages like Ruby, Javascript or Perl?

It’s the only scripting language listed — I suspect scripting languages weren’t the focus, but that it got special consideration and added to the list to not place the AI/ML R&D communities in an awkward spot. Of course they should move to something besides Python, but network effects give Python powerful inertia, and AI/ML is a strategic area.

Re: The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

#286
post #32

I advise training programmers instead of throwing them in front of a screen without any training. Companies these days provides no training at all. When I was hired over 40 years ago, I spent plenty of time being trained for my first 3 months. Now, nothing, and you if you want to train a new person, you do it on your own time.

[deleted]

Re: The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

#287
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go is memory safe, that post does not means anything in real life scenario. Do you have a single example in the last 14 years of memory safety exploit using the Go runtime? I'm talking about public and known exploit not ctf and the like.

The same author has a post from 2022 [1]. > Is it possible to achieve arbitrary code execution on any Go version, even with PIE, and with no package import at all, just builtins? Yes! Whether it's capture the flag is irrelevant, IMO, because anything that's allowed by the compiler will emerge given enough complexity. 1: https://blog.stalkr.net/2022/01/universal-go-exploit-using-d...

Go was released in 2009 and I've never heard about any exploit and what not , by the way this is known and by design it's not new. It's all about the multi word for interface.

I mean if in 14 years there was nothing it's a proof that it's not an issue.

Even the attacker ack that it's not a threat.

"As said before, while a fun exercise it's pretty useless in the current Go threat mode"

Re: The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> absolutely correct, in fact now some new hires are expected to do a few git-commit the first day(looking at you, Meta). Meta have a phenomenally good training program, called Bootcamp for basically everyone in engineering, so they're probably not the example you're looking for.

I recall meta expects new hires to do first commit the first day, not sure how its training will help in this scenario, this is in no way saying meta has no good training, it just does not add up here though.

How is that possible? It takes over a week just to get a new employee configured. Laptop, IDE, permissions to the hundred needed things, etc. Let alone opening up an unfamiliar codebase.

Unless it is a “hello world” commit to confirm tooling is operational, I have strong doubts.

Re: The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps

#290

How about a new drop-in replacement language for c/c++? I'm in no way an expert in any aspect that relates to this problem, but it's reasonable to believe that it would be but a mildly challenging task if companies like Google, meta, Microsoft and the likes joined forces. A year of concentrated efforts might be sufficient to rid us with this problem once and for all. Billions of lines of codes would gain (some) safet…

Google, Meta, Microsoft, and the likes are all investing heavily in Rust.

You can't do "drop-in replacement" and "memory safety" at the same time.

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