Slashdot Mirror
Secure Programming
viega writes "Matt Messier and I have just launched a secure programming web site. While this site does support our new book The Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++ , it also serves as a thorough resource for developers. It has numerous links to articles and other topical resources, new recipes that demonstrate secure programming techniques a large glossary and the obligatory web log. We accept outside submissions, and will reward the best recipe submission each month-- O'Reilly will publish it on the O'Reilly Network web site and will give the author a free book. There's already a decent amount of new content, including recipes on avoiding malloc()/new-related integer overflows, watching out for security problems in API differences and issues when truncating data. There's also an RSS feed for the web log."
It's a good idea to have resources that are committed to security. Although some will claim that languages such as Java or C# prevent security issues, this is simply not true - there are many avenues to building security weaknesses... and those that think they're safe merely by using a particular programming language are in for a nasty surprise.
Of course, a web site and a few books won't prevent security issues - but the more it gets the word out about good programming practices, the better!
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Herb Chambers - where my nightmare came true!
Are you somehow recommending a kernel be written in something else than C??? Sure, not all systems software is kernel mode C, but you have to realize that unless the underlying infrastructure is built (on some low level language), you can't have high level languages... in other words, the bottom line is Assembly. You have to build your way to it.
Now that said, the buffer overflow isn't the only security hole in the world, in fact more security holes come from very very high level, very abstract programming fallacies... such as for example the cookie exploit (it's a logical bug) that Hotmail had a while back.
All this being said, I feel like a dirty karma whore right now (feeling the slimey breath of modders down my neck), so I'll say it right out: I'M PRO MICROSOFT.
<runs for cover>
use a language that was specifically designed with security in mind
like say, Ada
oh yeah, let the negative moderation begin
because programmer can't stand being held by the hand
too big ego
They happen because A) most code is written in C or C++, and B) everyone makes mistakes (even the finest open source developers overlook simple buffer overflows).
That's not true. qmail and djbdns do not have security holes. They were written using secure coding techniques that make them immune to things like buffer overflows. You can't "overlook" a buffer overflow with stralloc.
This is just silly - existing commercial lisps compile to machine code, same as c, or fortran, or ada, etc. Current lisp implementations run on stock hardware, on all the major platforms - Windows (XP,ME, NT, 9x, Dos), Linux (ix86, sparc, ppc), Mac OS X (and Classic), and various Unices.
OS kernels are not written in lisp because Unix was written in C, so everyone mistakenly believed that C was *the* language for OS kernel implementation. However, this is simply not so. Any language compiler that can generate machine code can be used to write an OS kernel.
I recommend Python.
Open source, expressive (very short code can achieve a lot), readable (very short expressive code is easily groked -- fewer bugs), no direct pointer manipulation (safe -- fewer bugs), integrates nicely with other languages, runs on a variety of platforms, very easy to learn.
1. Create your own malloc/free new/delete heap. This heap should always have blocks of 0's interspersed throughout and a 1K walled block of 0's at the end of the heap. Any programming errors may result in garbage, but it won't result in injected code vulnerabilities.
2. No direct DB access technology on your web service front ends. If your web UI code has SQL in it, you're doing something wrong. Your Web GUI should access an intermediate layer, instead. UI is notoriously easy to compromise, and the best way to make SQL injection attacks is to not have SQL directly beneath the button your users are playing with.