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The Lessons of Software Monoculture
digitalsurgeon writes "SD Times has a story by Jeff Duntemann where he explains the 'Software monoculture' and why Microsoft's products are known for security problems. Like many Microsoft enthusiasts he claims that it's the popularity and market share of Microsoft's products that are responsible, and he notes that the problem is largely with C/C++ and mostly because of the buffer overflow problems."
Wasn't this why C# was created?
This is idiotic... The language is simply a tool. If you dont know how to use a hammer without crushing your finger,use screws, or dont and stop blaming the hammer for losing your pinky.
As a programmer, I feel the continual march of progress in computing has been hampered as of late because of a major misconception in some segments of the software industry. Some would argue that the process of refinement by iterative design, which is the subject of many texts in the field -- extreme programming being the most recent -- demonstrates that applying the theory of evolution to coding is the most effective model of program 'design'.
But this is erroneous. The problem is that while extremely negative traits are usually stripped away in this model, negative traits that do not (metaphorically) explicitly interfere with life up until reproduction often remain. Additionally, traits that would be extremely beneficial that are not explicitly necessary for survival fail to come to light. Our ability to think and reason was not the product of evolution, but was deliberately chosen for us. Perhaps this is a thought that should again be applied to the creation of software.
It makes no sense to choose the option of continually hacking at a program until it works as opposed to properly designing it from the start. One only has to compare the security woes of Microsoft or Linux with the rock-solid experience of OpenBSD for an example. It makes little sense from a business perspective as well; it costs up to ten times as much to fix an error by the time it hits the market as it would to catch it during the design. Unfortunately, as much of this cost is borne by consumers and not the companies designing buggy products, it's harder to make the case for proper software engineering -- especially in an environment like Microsoft where one hand may not often be aware of what the other is doing.
Don't be fooled into thinking open source is free of the 'monoculture' mindset, either. While it is perhaps in a better position to take advantage of vibrant and daring new concepts because of the lack of need to meet a marketing deadline or profitability requirement the types of holy wars one might have noticed between KDE/GNOME or Free Software/Open Source demonstrate that there are at least some within every community that feel they hold the monopoly on wisdom.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
...that with .net - a patch to the framework can fix the buffer overflows (and other bugs) which are discovered and the benefits will be instantly seen by all applications using it. With C/C++, etc - you need to scan and fix each individual application for bugs. Its easier to fix the runtime than individual apps because every exploit would generally be exploiting the runtime (as long as its managed) which would make the runtime very robust. WIth C/C++, each time you discover a buffer overflow or similar exploit in an app, it does say anything about other apps which might have similar problems.
Chirayu Krishnappa
I thought that's why Microsoft was pushing for "managed code" with the .Net framework. Though I think it's some what ripping the idea(s) from Sun's Java. But I'm sure even with .Net, there will still be buffer overflows. Well...the GDI+ exploit is one prime example of that fact.
An interesting distinction to make is that .NET code itself isn't vulnerable to buffer overflows. GDI+ is an unmanaged component (likely written in C++), and is vulnerable. The problem is that .NET exposes GDI+ functionality through its graphics classes, and since those classes are part of the .NET framework, .NET itself essentially becomes vulnerable to buffer overflows.
Microsoft appears to be shifting its APIs to the managed world, either as wrappers to legacy APIs, or new APIs built completely in the .NET world (or both as is the case with WinFX). So to expand on your post, as long as legacy code is used, yeah, buffer overflows will still be possible, but by shifting more code to managed world the likelihood of such vulnerabilities will hopefully diminish.
[...]popularity and market share of Microsoft's products that are responsible [...] the problem is largely with C/C++ [...]
Yup, that's 2 bullshits in one sentence.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Secondly, its record speaks for itself- windows, outlook, and IE are exploited because IT'S SO FREAKING EASY. Sure, you can maybe sort of lock out users from core system functions, but you can't lock out applications from altering core system files. Hello, the Registry! Hello .dll and .vxd! Just visit a Web site and poof! ownz0red. Just leave your winduhs system connected to the Internet, and bam! Instant spam relay. such a friendly lil OS!
Really dood, you call yourself a programmer- you should know better. Face the facts. If you can.
we will end no whine before its time
It's really not that hard to avoid buffer overflows in C/C++. It's not the fault of the language, but of the programmer. Obviously, avoiding buffer overflows is an added thing to think about when coding in C/C++, but I've worked with enough Java programmers to know that no language can compensate for a poor/ignorant programmer.
It's just an excuse, plain and simple.
Once again, another defender of Microsoft's software fails to explain why IIS, with it's smaller market share, has had far more vulnerabilities and more severe vulnerabilities than Apache.
I think what all MS apologists ignore is the security in depth that exists in *NIX systems. They ignore issues like a vulnerability in Apache may not result in a root compromise, because it is running as an unpriviledged user.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Maybe I'm just ignorant and ill-read, but I've never even heard of Writing Solid Code, which according to the article is a classic. I somehow missed it while reading The Art of Computer Programming, The Dragon Book, The Structure and Interpretion of Computer Programs, Software Tools, and the like.
I'm also amazed at the idea that competant programmers in a decently run company can't avoid writing software full of bugs because C and C++ lead to buffer overflow errors. They're easy enough to avoid. I've never had one in anything I've written and its not as if I've never had a bug.
All languages are susceptible to security problems.
However C and C++ (and a few other languages) are susceptible to buffer overflows - where it is common for bugs to cause "execution of arbitrary code of the attacker's choice" - this is BAD.
There are saner languages where such things aren't as common. While Lisp can be compiled, AFAIK it is not inherently susceptible to buffer overflows. OCaml isn't susceptible to buffer overflows either and is in the class of C and C++ performance-wise.
"arbitrary code of the attacker's choice" can still be executed in such languages, just at a higher level = e.g. SQL Injection. Or "shell/script".
However one can avoid "SQL injection" with minimal performance AND programmer workload impact by enforcing saner interfaces e.g. prepared statements, bind variables etc.
How does one do the same thing with respect to buffer overflows and C or C++, AND still have things look and work like C or C++?
It's odd to refute specific points of the article when its basic premise is flawed, but the one that applies is "all software has bugs". This is a defeatest attitude that is contradicted by the existence of formal methods for proving a piece of software to be bug free, and even of automatic theroem provers for showing software to be bug free (such as ACL2). This is the part that I was complaining about, and it is fair to criticise that without having to go into the finer points of the rest of the article.
To further expound on my original complaint, the article argues that microsoft's bad reputation is due to the popularity of its software, but this is only valid if it is impossible to make software better than Microsoft. The article seems to lean this way by stating that Microsoft has some of the smartest developers around working for it, but having the smartest developers doesn't mean that it produces the best code. Microsoft has earned its bad reputation by allowing so many bugs into such critical software like an Operating System.
The problem is that nobody writes perfect code.
Yes, we're all nerds, and we're all arrogant. We all like to act as if _our_ code is perfect, while everyone else is a clueless monkey writing bad code. _Our_ bugs are few and minor, if they exist at all, while theirs are unforgivable and should warrant a death sentence. Or at the very least kicking out of the job and if possible out of the industry altogether.
The truth however is that there's an average number of bugs per thousand lines of code, and in spite of all the best practices and cool languages it's been actually _increasing_ lately.
Partially because problems get larger and larger, increasing internal communication problems and making it harder to keep in mind what every function call does. ("Oh? You mean _I_ was supposed to call that parameter's range before passing it to you?")
This becomes even more so when some unfortunate soul has to maintain someone else's mountain of code. They're never even given the time to learn what everything does and where it is, but are supposed to make changes until yesterday if possible. It's damn easy to miss something, like that extra parameter being a buffer length, except it was calculated somewhere else. Or even hard-coded because the original coder assumed that "highMagic(buf, '/:.', someData, 80)" should be obvious for everyone.
And partially because of the increassing aggressiveness of snake oil salesmen. Every year more and more baroque frameworks are sold, which are supposed to make even untrained monkeys able to write secure performant code. They don't. But clueless PHBs and beancounters buy them, and then actually hire untrained monkeys because they're cheap. And code quality shows it.
But either way, everyone has their own X bugs per 1000 lines of code, after testing and debugging. You may be the greatest coder to ever walk the Earth, and you'll still have your X. It might be smaller than someone else's X, but it exists.
And when you have a mountain of code of a few tens of _millions_ of lines of code, even if you had God's own coding practices and review practices, and got that X down to 0.1 errors per 1000 lines of code... it still will mean some thousands of bugs lurking in there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Methodology matters.
I would agree with TFA if the author were comparing Internet Explorer 4 with, let's say, Netscape 6 or Opera 7. If he were, then I would whole-heartedly agree that IE is a victim of its own popularity and that software monocolture is an "evolutionary" reality mirrored in biological systems.
But...
There is a difference between how IE code gets written and how Mozilla code gets written. I'm not going to make any asinine qualitative comparisons between the skills of Mozilla contributors and MS staff (I respect both), but let's face it....
YOU know the difference between writing a commercial product with an unrealistic deadline, a list of new features four pages long (most of which are crap) and under the direction of non-technical managers who like Gantt charts and daily productivity reports and writing a project for your own self-satisfaction.
Mozilla code is written incrementally, with the goal of quality in mind, under public scrutiny (no peer review beats public scrutiny) and many of the contributors are doing it because they want to do it and want to do a good job. It's their pet project.
Compare the quality of code you write for work or in college under strict deadlines, and the code you write for fun.
- How many alternatives algorithms do you go through with each?
- Do you settle for "good enough" when you are writing code for yourself?
- Are you doing your own corner-case QA as well as you could be when you make that check-in into the company CVS when you know that QA will most likely test it (as an intern, I used to share a desk with QA guys, the catch is that they love to cut corners).
Not to mention endemic problems with large corporate projects of any type: corporate pride which prevents people from going back on bad decisions (ActiveX and IE security zones), lack of management support (how many top coders are still actively developing IE? any?), and all kinds of office politics. Many of these are avoided with well managed open source projects.
Cheers,
AC
BTW, what kind of brain damaged designer allows for pointer arithmetic in a garbage collected language?
Umm, one who knows that it is required for proper interoperability with existing libraries? One who knows more about language design than you?
The CLI actually isn't a "garbage collected language". First, it isn't a language - it is a language infrastructure (the LI in CLI). Second, garbage collection is available to the languages, but not required. It is a complete virtual machine, and straight C/C++ ports just fine to it, including all the buffer overruns.
However, there is a convention for "safe" programming. If you follow the convention, the assembly loader can verify that there are no buffer overruns or similar problems in your program. The price you pay is access to low-level constructs such as pointers, since their use cannot be verified.
Loading assemblies with unverifiable code is a privilege, which allows security to be maintained.
I think it all boils down to: the decision was the right one, it was well implemented, so stop talking about stuff you know nothing about.
I really don't think C/C++ are to blame for ActiveX vulnerabilities.
I completely agree. The problem with ActiveX and some other Microsoft ideas is that they're fundamentally flawed with regards to security. You simply don't allow arbitrary code to download and execute. ActiveX shouldn't exist at all, and you're right, the problem is deeper than the language chosen.
So is being distanced from the hardware good or bad? If anything, interpreted languages put the programmer more distant from the operating hardware.
The problem with compiled languages like C(++) are that you DO have to deal with memory management directly, thus creating buffer overflow exploits. However, all languages are vulnerable to input verification problems, of which buffer overflows are a subset. The problem is sloppy programmers, not bad languages, compiled or otherwise.
Also, no offense, but compilers are pretty damn smart pieces of software. Almost all security problems arise from the application software, not the compiler/interpreter.
Furthermore, the difference between compilation and interpretation is not particularly distinct these days, anyway, especially when dealing with VMs. You "compile" Java into bytecodes, which are executed by the Java VM, which in turn compiles and executes native code for the host machine. Conversely, many processors perform on the fly "translation" of instructions from one ISA to another.
ph34r teh p0w3r 0f th3 c0w
Hmm, try putting a web server implemented in shell script on the internet and see what happens :). Shell scripts are interpreted, but have so many "tricks" such as backtick expansion, variable expansion etc. that it is virtuall impossible to write a safe program with it.
I don't see how program safety has something to do with being compiled or not. It is just a different class of security holes that you get depending on the language.
The claim is that windows gets attacked so much because it's the most popular... but consider the following:
Look at the different web servers in the world, and look at what percentage of them run Microsoft's webserver and what percentage of them run another system.
Now take a wild guess which webserver actually has the greatest number of exploits for it floating around. Anyone who pays any attention at all to their access logs on their webserver will tell you they get almost insane numbers of IIS exploit attempts on their webservers each and every day.
But Microsoft doesn't have the marketshare in the web server market to justify the disproportional number of attacks it gets, yet it's _CLEARLY_ in the lead for being attacked.
Conclusion: Microsoft's view that they are being "picked on" because they are in the lead is false. They are being picked on because they are highly accessible target that develops software that is easy to exploit, and Microsoft is simply too stubborn to admit that it has a real problem, insted amounting to blaming it on something resembling "jealousy".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I remember ten? years ago when the first ActiveX stuff was introduced and thinking and hearing others mention how it was "fundamentally flawed with regards to security."
It was generally agreed upon that "You simply don't allow arbitrary code to download and execute." And that "ActiveX shouldn't exist at all."
That it took the Retards From Redmond a decade to figure out what even the most junior engineer should know about computer security is a damning indication that the problems at MS are "deeper than the language chosen."
OpenBSD and OpenVMS are written in C. Qmail and djbdns are written in C.
Is it difficult to prevent buffer overflows? If you are reading a string, either use a string class, or read only as many characters as the character array can store. (What a novel idea!) If you are writing a string, among other things, set the last possible character of that string to null, just in case.
These are but single simplified examples, but it is not impossible by any means, or even all that difficult, to write solid code.
Among other things, the problem is that it takes individual effort to make sure every static-sized buffer isn't abused. As Murphy would tell you, human error is bound to crop up--increasingly so as the complexity of the project increases. I believe there was a post on the formula for this not too long ago.
As to the solution, well, that's a tough one. Higher level languages (Java, C#) help reduce these problems (and help reduce performance as well), but are just a band-aid. Perhaps the Manhattan Project (no, not that one) will come up with something better.
Until then, try to avoid products which have proven themselves to be full of holes year after year, week after week. And no, this doesn't just include all Microsoft server software. BIND and Sendmail come to mind.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
"And when you have a mountain of code of a few tens of _millions_ of lines of code"
Isn't that the real problem. No program should include tens of millions of lines of code. That's the whole point of developing software in layers.
How does one do the same thing with respect to buffer overflows and C or C++, AND still have things look and work like C or C++?
This is borderline troll material! Would you stop beating that dead horse? You avoid buffer overflows in C by checking the lengths of your buffers. You stop using C strings. You use container libraries. As for C++, you avoid them by using the included string and container classes.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Methinks you have never done any serious coding in C.
Consider, for example, the following valid bit of C code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main()
{
char* a = "abcdefg";
a[8] = 'a';
printf("%d\n", strlen(a));
return 0;
}
This even compiles on gcc with -Wall without any errors or warnings, yet it segfaults every time you run it.
You know, maybe there's a point here. Perhaps if everyone switched to some other language, bugs and exploits would trend down. But there's more to it than this, and this isn't the biggest issue.
If you want to remove the errors from your code you have to dedicate the time to do so. Microsoft have shown that they are not willing to do so - they optimise for speed, integration and good looks rather than security and effectiveness.
And now they're falling apart on their traditional specialty too, because their software is like Swiss cheese. You can use it to make a sandwich, but you can't build on it.
As people have pointed out, Microsoft is not the monolith most laymen assume. Oh, sure, you and I see a Microsoft logo or picture when we turn on our computer, but who knew that most of the Internet was running on Linux, BSD and a handful of related OSes? Who knew that most of the world's fileservers were Novell? These are the real targets in the networked world, yet it's IIS that gets it. It's Windows 2000 Server that gets it.
Duntemann is right - Microsoft don't hire total retards to write their programs. Given the opportunity, they have shown that they can do what they're supposed to do. But they aren't supposed to do security, so they don't.
Microsoft may be changing their minds now. They are certainly marketing in that direction, but who knows? They're one of the most successful marketing companies in the world, but their lies are wearing thin (remember all those blue screen TV ads for Windows XP?)
It's no accident that they're using the languages they are at Microsoft, and it's no accident their work is inefficient and full of holes. They neglected these areas on purpose so that they could focus on "it runs fast and it comes with the computer."
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
I would expect C/C++ (in it's current form) dies off as the dominant language of software development within the next 5-10 years because the additional execution efficency will become less and less significant with hardware improvements.
We've been hearing this for years now. Unfortunately, computers will never be "fast enough" where speed no longer matters. Games will always push as many polygons as possible, and when they have so many that you can't tell the difference, they'll up the resolution and start again. Emulators will always aim for higher and higher targets (look at PearPC, for example. Can that take a large performance hit for security?). Cryptography tools and video / audio codecs will also need to push higher and higher bitrates through. Point being: there will always be a need for c/c++, and even assembly. It's just that now, it's less likely neccesary for that text editor you're working on, or that picture viewer.
I do, however, agree that with time (a lot longer than 5-10 years), the majority of applications that do not need cutting edge speed will be written in different languages. Much like what happened to x86 assembly during the past 10 years or so.
His argument, spelled out, seems to be:
Personally I find this argument to be quite baseless, and I'll believe it when I see it. Even if he is correct and Firefox might have as many bugs (because hey, it's written in C/C++), he doesn't seem to've provided any logical reasoning for people who are about to move to change their mind.
Even Jeff Duntemann admits that MSIE supposedly has at least as many bugs are Firefox. Given this reasoning, there's the choice between deploying MSIE (which is proven over and over again to be unsafe and full of security holes), and Firefox (for which nothing is proven).
It seems very shallow --- he's pitting something proven versus something unproven, and essentially claiming that we should assume they're both identically bad. I'll take my chances with Firefox, thank you very much. If everyone flocks to Firefox and it suddenly becomes a big security risk, I'll deal with it at the time.
Where the problem with Microsoft has got a lot more to do with their management forcing competitors products into the ground ensuring that they get those high 90s market share figures.
Microsoft is rather better known for poor security tactics.
The argument that it's some inherent flaw in C doesn't hold water, as it can be not only programmed around, but a multiple layer approach to security would as a minimum ensure that each bug found had limited damage, instead of the typical issue in MS products which is that a single hole will render the entire system to be a remote control for anyone on the Internet. This is the same for viruses on the windows platform, and part of the basic structure of how the OS handles commands sent between software. (Such as the famous trick to elevate your priviledges in 'secured' windows boxes.)
In the end, shipping an OS with just about every internet service and port open by default is not a fault in the C programming language. It's a filthy oversight.
It is well known and widely-accepted that you can write bad code with good language. AND you can write good code with bad language.
:-)
And, of course, a nice virtual machine or bytecode interpreter/runtime compiler can make zillions of check of your code to deal with your lazyness. But hey, who said the VM itself is secure? Alot of VMs I know of are written in guess what? C/C++
What I am afraid of, however, is M$ is implying that C/C++ is so flawless and that is really has to be replaced with C#.. just a short step and bright future awaits us. And people take all that as Gospel
Y'know, on the face of it, assuming Microsoft's gaping secuirty holes in it's default Windows distribution could be attributed to its massive popularity. a twist on the old OSS saw that many eyes make all bugs (or holes big enough to drive a herd of mastadons through) obvious. This is usually a canned reply by Windows Partisians to Linux/Mac/Etc. Partisians when they gloat about the latest OE bug or self-installing spyware package.
But it doesn't hold much water when you look at the wider world, where Microsoft doesn't dominate.
Oracle and MySQL dwarf SQL Server's installed base, yet it's the Microsoft product that's caused the most headaches to IT security teams over the years. Ditto Apache vs. IIS... Apache is everywhere, source code is available and documented, and it is nowhere near as hackable as IIS, assuming admins of equal ability managing either system.
I think it's just that Microsoft's monopoly position has extinguished any sense of urgency in meeting it's customer's actual needs.
SoupIsGood Food
I am sure that Microsoft, Linux, Apache and whatnot other programmers know the theory too. Too bad that buffer overflows still happen.
"With something that has as many lines of code as Windows and IE, it's impossible not to miss at least one bug."
....a bug in which program, windows or IE?
The absolute insistence on the part of MS on integrating the browser (and shortly, the media player) into the operating system has bred this kind of exploits and vulnerabilities. I expect that it would be much easier to debug them if they were separate, an aspect that helps Firefox perhaps more than being Open Source.
One more thing about the article: his "darwinian" approach, by which the most popular program get the most vulnerabilites because they attract the most attacks, has two fallacies:
1.If it were true, Apache would be the most "vulnerable" server;
2. All programs below a certain circulation would be immune.
I have no insight on point 2, but strangely enough the more attacks are reported the more Apache market share grows. and when people are voting with their feet and money....
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
"C and C++, are really the same language at the core, where these sorts of bugs happen."
That really tells you the author doesn't understand C++. Of course, that suggests the conclusion is flaky.
The problem he alludes to is that it is possible to compile C with a C++ compiler (with very little exceptions, e.g. int class; won't work). That means your buggy C program probably will compile as well. Most C runtime bugs aren't caught suddenly at C++ compile time.
However, the two languages are distinct. C++ string processing isn't done with char pointers, but with a class. In C, you'd use strcat() to append to a string. That can overflow. In C++, you use string += , which automatically grows the left-hand side.
The new version of MSVC++ deprecates these C string functions. This clearly shows you don't need them.
In theory you are right, and better tools already exist. E.g., Java has array bounds checking by language definition. E.g., dunno abound Microsoft Visual C++, but I've used C compilers before which could generate code with array bounds checking. (TopSpeed C, for example.) It didn't even require any IDE macros, it just plain and simple generated them in the code automatically, if told to.
The problem however is that, well, no language or library ever can force you to stop making mistakes.
E.g., Java does throw an Exception if you try to overflow a buffer, but that's not an automatic magic talisman against bugs. You still can't let any ex-burger-flipper loose on the keyboard and say "nah, they can't have bugs or security problems. The language won't let them." What happens in practice is that:
1. People catch the exception and ignore it, on account that "it can't happen." Or even write "catch (Throwable t) {}" blocks. (Catch anything whatsoever and ignore without as much as a line in the log.)
2. Which in turn can make the program malfunction in more subtle ways. Even if you don't ignore exceptions is forgetting that the exception may have skipped some code. E.g., closing files or database handles is the most benign, in that it just causes the program to eventually run out of resources and crash.
A less benign case is when the code skipped was, for example, the login authentication. Carefully malformed data might not execute random code, but allow the user to escallate their rights to super-user.
And while a buffer overflow might have turned your machine into a spam zombie, this will instead give them all your business data on a silver platter. Nicely formatted, indexed and searchable too. And allow them to change it too.
3. In a twisted way, a secure language is the worst language because it causes complacency. Yes, it's a bit of an exaggeration, but bear with me while I make a point. Thinking "nah, we're secure because we use Java" (or SSL, or whatever) is the arch-nemesis of security. That way lies madness and skipping a real security analysis.
E.g., where I work, we had a failed project coded not by us but by a team of uber-expensive consultants from a BIG corporation. Utterly incompetent monkeys, but expensive consultants anyway.
It allowed a user to change their id to another user by merely editting the parameter in the URL. Since user id 0 was the super-admin, there you go, an easy way for everyone to escalate their privileges.
It also allowed anyone to access and _edit_ any data, including other users' data and passwords, again by simply editting the URL. Including, yes, changing the passwords for the admin and then logging in as admin.
It also allowed users to embed HTML text and even JavaScript in their text, which would be faithfully included in the page without quoting. Just in case you wanted to cause a JavaScript exploit or redirect to be displayed in other users' or admins' browser, you know.
What was worse, though, was that it didn't quote text used to build SQL statements either, basically allowing anyone to exploit the program into giving them all the data in the system. (If they didn't already get to it via the previous two exploits. As they say, three's a charm.)
Etc.
Again, personally I'd rate that as _worse_ than a buffer overflow. Attacking a company's own web programs via buffer overflows, and finding your way from there to the data, is something only a die-hard black-hat would do. Even ordinary script kiddies with rootkits won't bother doing much more than installing a spam zombie or warez/porn ftp server there. Whereas this presented an intuitive, menu-driven, user-friendly way to own a company's business data. And _change_ that data as you see fit.
In a nutshell, that's what happens when you start thinking that the language or libraries are a magic talisman. The moment you think "nah, we don't need a security analysis, because the holy Java will protect us"... that's when you are the most vulnerable.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Aren't we simplifying things just a leetle bit here? Yes, monoculture is not good, because it creates the basis for a scenario of total failure, and C in the hands of the more witless sort of programmer can certainly be lethal (although, ANY language in the hands of a stupid programmer is a bad idea. Just look at the host of Visual Basic crap).
However, as far as I can see, by far the largest problem on the internet is the way Microsoft has built powerful programming capabilities into a number of their products, and the way things just happen automatically by default. Perhaps it is getting better, but only slowly. To illustrate: I work in an office where most users have Windows on their desktops, but I use Linux. We have had on average something like 3 or 4 major alerts about email worms per month in the last year, and it has affected everybody else except me. Is this because Windows is a monoculture and programmed in C? Or is it because Microsoft stupidly decided to build in functionality that supports these worms?
The truth is that no matter how many buffer overflows there may be in Linux, BSD etc, we are not likely to ever have problems with email worms - unless some idiot puts the necessary functionality in place.
There are saner languages where such things aren't as common. While Lisp
You make it sound as if avoiding buffer overflows is some kind of obscure, costly language feature. No. C/C++ are exceptional (exceptionally bad) in that they permit this; most programming languages don't permit this to happen, and many of them still give you about the same performance and the same low-level control as C/C++.
How does one do the same thing with respect to buffer overflows and C or C++, AND still have things look and work like C or C++?
It's not hard, you just need to distinguish two kinds of pointers: the safe variety (like object and array "references" in Java) and the unsafe variety (like the ones used by C programmers). The unsafe variety is where all the problems come from and it only needs to be used rarely.
Wrong. You do let arbitrary code download and run all the time.
Each time you go to a web site that uses JavaScript, guess what? You download and run arbitrary code. Interpreted code, yes, but arbitrary code nevertheless.
Each time you download a Java or Flash applet, even if just as an ad on a page, you are downloading and running arbitrary code. In Java's case even downloading and compiling it to binary code for your CPU.
As I've said before it would be possible to sandbox ActiveX to hell and back. Make it run in a virtual environment where it can't touch any files that it didn't create itself (e.g., a chroot jail), open any ports, or even call the OS methods without first going through a sanity checking layer.
Now Microsoft doesn't do that, and it's guilty as charged of bad design there. That much we can aggree upon.
But dismissing it all as "You simply don't allow arbitrary code to download and execute." is simplistic. And in fact it's over-simplified thinking like "Java=good, binary code=bad" is the arch-nemesis of security.
Real security doesn't involve mindlessly pinning magic talismans onto the code, nor repeating fashionable mantras. It involves a real security analysis. Who's going to attack us? How? What _can_ happen? How can we prevent that? Etc.
Again, obviously MS didn't do a real security analysis there. We can aggree on that. But that's no reason to assume that one can't possibly be done by anyone.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If it were that simple, than there should be no buffer overflows in modern C/C++ programs. But it apparently isn't that simple, for several reasons. Using container libraries costs extra time and effort, and it is less efficient than error checking that is built into the compiler, for example. Also, using container libraries is not something that the C/C++ compilers help enforce; that is, if some module doesn't use it, nobody ever gets warned about it.
To dismiss such concerns as "borderline troll material" is just stupid; apparently, you think that any opinion that inconveniences you should just be suppressed. Look at the bug lists and security alerts: the problem isn't going away. We need better tools to help people avoid it, and plain C/C++ apparently isn't enough for real-world programmers not to make these mistakes.
Thats because thare are way to many programmers who think they know more than that they acutally do.
For example; they think they know how to program a computor.
Just saying it like it are.
So is being distanced from the hardware good or bad?
The issue has nothing to do with distance from the hardware. The kind of pitfalls C and C++ have are avoidable even in low-level languages.
The problem with compiled languages like C(++) are that you DO have to deal with memory management directly, thus creating buffer overflow exploits. However, all languages are vulnerable to input verification problems, of which buffer overflows are a subset.
We fix things one problem at a time. We can't do anything about general input verification, but we can help sloppy programmers avoid problems with buffer overflows and memory allocation by automating it.
The problem is sloppy programmers, not bad languages, compiled or otherwise.
These are the sloppy programmers that are writing the code we all use. Preaching at them hasn't helped for the last several decades, so it isn't going to help now. Whether it is their moral failing that they produce bugs or not, obviously, they need something else to help them produce better code.
We put safety features into lots of products: plugs, cars, knives, etc., because we know people make mistakes and people are sloppy. Trying to build programming languages without safety features and then blaming the programmer for the invariable accidents makes no sense.
Furthermore, the difference between compilation and interpretation is not particularly distinct these days, anyway,
The presence of safety features does not depend on the nature of the language. You can have a language identical in semantics, performance, and flexibility to C (or C++) and make it much less likely that people will accidentally make errors in it (while probably being more productive at the same time).
While I really deeply respect J. D. (he wrote my first Pascal book, that pretty much put me on the structured programming track), I don't agree, and not with nyda either.
The bigger security problems of Microsoft software are three fold:
- indeed bufferoverflows are a C program, but most other OSes have this too.
- Microsoft is under hacker fire. True, but so is e.g. Apache, and that project has a much better trackrecord
- which brings me to the actual point: the main software development problem of Microsoft is the deep integration of systems, and the total unmanagable chaos as a result. Everything is integrated with everything.
P.s. C has a quite small and straightforward runtime, and this IMHO has a mitigating effect on C software development. The runtime is very predicatable, compared to e.g. JVM, CLR, and the various scripting languages
The only 'logical' way to eliminate buffer overflows was already know 30+ years ago: Don't make data areas executable!, that simple!
Now if after 30+ years, computer industry still is unable/uninterested to fix that simple problem, That's the real problem!
Stop blamming the tools (languages/etc) or the people (programmers/admins/etc), is the system stupid.
What's in a sig?
Well, use the unsafe keyword and you are entering buffer overflow land. but they go out of their way to make that hard to do, and mostly unneeded.
I know that Sun like to point to "unsafe" as a recipe for disaster, but every time you see the word "native" in Java, you know that they are binding to a potentially unsafe language, and in the same boat.
IMO, a move to managed languages will stop buffer overflows, and we should do it for all UI stuff and other apps where performance is not #1 priority. Which means most apps. Which particular language platform is another issue - C#, Java, Python, they all have their strengths.
as every time with M$'n'bugz story, I want to repeat my thesis:
..."
;-)
M$ continually misleads and milks the dumb users that it created.
the worst side effect M$ has spawned over the years, is the
propagation of computer semi- or illiterate users, that are
lead into the illusion of a bulletproof environment that will
do-for-them-what-they-want.
It starts with ignoring any available textbooks, throwing away manuals, thrashing installation guides along with the packaging even before even trying the 'plug-and-pray' ritual, moving on to the belief that anything can be resolved by clicking 'yes' or 'no' to
any set of questions asked by the system. Naturally, this is nerdy behaivour, too.
When something goes wrong, its "fix my computer, you incompetent
phrase for the post-sales, support, sysadmin or any nearest computer-literate person all over again. Here is the difference: a nerd fixes things hands-on, our joe-illiterate-user, on the other hand, blames the nearest nerd!
It's the spoiled brats who defend the main part of M$ market share and most its earnings - since M$ has lead them to believe it can
deliver them an omnipotent tool without the need to learn, maintain or comprehend anything.
M$ deliver now, fix later-or-never politics
that is in clear contrast to the beliefs of its last faithful users,
nicely complements the situation above to create the ultimate "business" model that is beyond any parasitic capabilities.
The only solution offered is buying newer products and paying for support into infinity...
sorry for tipos - blame the M$ IE I just used
How may of you can honestly say "I have never, ever created an interface without possibility to change expected behaviour"?
How may of you can honestly say "I have never, ever made a mistake while coding or designing program logic and flow"?
If you answered "I can" to all three you are lying!
That is the essence of secure software. We all make mistakes, including seasoned, paranoid veterans as myself. Some of us less others more, noone make NO mistakes. The more complex a system is the greater the risk of a fatal mistake...
The only way to make secure software is;
If anything at all was done in a manner similar to how software is developed -- with critical parts of the system handled by people with no education or experience, under constant stress, with specifications changing faster than they are implemented -- it will be a constant, never ending disaster. A C or C++ programmer working in decent conditions is not any more prone to write code with buffer overflow than, say, an engineer designing a vehicle is prone to make another Ford Pinto. The problem is, no one would dare to place and engineer working on a car into working conditions that are considered acceptable for a software developer.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Companies who are only now implementing the concept of a root account
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. Windows NT has had an Administrator account, being similar in principle to the unix idea of 'root', since it was first released over 10 years ago.
In a nutshell, that's what happens when you start thinking that the language or libraries are a magic talisman
No, that's what happens when you employ clueless morons to write code for you. No language (that I'm aware of) can protect you from making those sort of fundamental errors. I guarantee that if the same team were to code in C/C++, the code would be full of buffer overflows *as well as* everything else you listed.
It also highlights one of the potential dangers of completely outsourcing a software project - unless you get constant access to the code during development, you're helpless to prevent this sort of thing from happening. You only find out about it at the end, when it's very much more expensive to put it right.
Anyway, I hope you got a fair chunk of your money back.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Interesting theory. I wonder how they came up with it. I happen to strongly disagree. This sounds more like microsoft trying to justify the poor job they've done in configuration management and quality assurance. Not an issue of software development tools.
Yes, although C and C++ has the capabilities to create such issues such as buffer overflow. Every good programmer I know understands the implications of using such functions and avoids it. If Microsoft programmers don't understand it then maybe microsoft should hire better programmers. In terms of the problems that exist in windows I don't believe this to be the case. And since I work in the tech support field I think I can call myself an authority on the subject. All the problems that I've ever seen in windows can not only be reproduced through testing they come up time and time again. They span multiple versions of windows and are never fixed despite the fact that microsoft knows about them. They've even created small patches to fix the problems when they crop up but have never worked to prevent the problems from occuring again.
This is why I don't buy your argument on the software Monoculture. One problem I see almost every day is a problem known by its error message "Operation was attempted on something that was not a socket.:" This problem has been around since microsoft created Windows NT and effects Windows 2000 and Windows XP also. Microsoft in all this time has not fixed the problem. They know about it. I mean I've personally sent customers to microsofts technical support department to have the problem repaired. Microsoft has an article on support.microsoft.com on how to fix the problem. If they can fix it then why don't they fix it so that it doesn't happen again? I'll tell you why. Because they can't be bothered. Every time someone calls Microsofts tech support for this problem its $30 and thats a major source of revenue.
The prevous problem is not the only problem I've seen on this issue. Take for instance the problem with spyware recently. Spyware is installed on peoples computers through security vulnerabilities in the Internet explorer browser. They know the exact security hole that causes the problem. Its the feature that allows you to place an Icon in the address bar with your website URL. They just recently published service pack two. You know what their solution was? They put a popup stopper into Intenet Explorer a solution that creates more problems then it fixes.
Lets take another problem and this one is the most damning of all. This problem has manifested itself in every version of windows since Windows 95. And It has been a problem since then. I mean you will run into this issue if you are running Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and Windows XP. Microsoft knows about it. They even created a little function in windows to fix the problem in windows XP. Its having to reinstall the TCP / IP stack. Although fixing the problem has gotten easier in Windows XP. They have a nice menu item when you right click on Local Area Connection in the connection screen of the control panel. However, you still have to do it. Why haven't they fixed that. Its because they get paid $30 every time someone calls about this problem.
These aren't buffer overflow problems. They constitute for 90% of the problems I deal with every single day. They are problems that span multiple versions of Windows and have never been fixed. This argument is completely wrong I can't believe people are buying into it.
Using container libraries costs extra time and effort
No, it doesn't. The first times, when you don't know how to do it, perhaps, but after that, using them is much faster and easier than developing ad-hoc solutions everywhere.
and it is less efficient than error checking that is built into the compiler, for example.
And less efficient than error checking built into the compiler ? Why ? It's error checking done by the compiler, only the error checks aren't hardcoded in the compiler, but implemented by the standard library.
Also, using container libraries is not something that the C/C++ compilers help enforce; that is, if some module doesn't use it, nobody ever gets warned about it.
It's because of backwards compatibility with C. If you program in C++, you're supposed to use the standard library containers. The thing is, without the backward compatibility with C, C++ wouldn't have been quite as successful, anyway.
We need better tools to help people avoid it, and plain C/C++ apparently isn't enough for real-world programmers not to make these mistakes.
It's enough, only if properly used. There's no need for new tools. What's the point of creating new tools when the old one are rarely ever used properly, anyway ? I also though that C++ sucked until I learned to use it properly.
The truth is that no matter how many buffer overflows there may be in Linux, BSD etc, we are not likely to ever have problems with email worms - unless some idiot puts the necessary functionality in place.
Yes, exactly! Unix had a great head start compared to Windows. It was developed with a multiuser environment in mind. Legions of students have been banging on VAX machines, just to become root; both locally and remote. This led to a high awareness to security issues back then, when the system was being designed and stress-tested.
OTOH, Windows evolved form single-user CP/M, then DOS and acquired networked capabilities way too late in the development process. Adding security as an afterthought is extremely complicated. Especially when you want to (or have to) retain backward compatibility with tons of legacy software.
In short: Unix had to prevail in a hard environment when it was being developed. It remained (mostly) secure afterwards. Windows didn't have to prevail against attacks in its early days, and it never acquired the necessary level of "immunity" later.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
...he notes that the problem is largely with C/C++ and mostly because of the buffer overflow problems.
Oh, please! Every good programmer know how to handle memory allocations because *he knows how the machine works*! If we have so many buffer overflow problems today is because the great majority of the programmers out there don't understand/care about something that is the base of their work.
Think this way: you are a mechanic that builds internal combustion motors. But you don't understand how internal combustion motors works. So, will you build a good or a bad motor?
(And yes, you can build other types of motors if you don't understand/care how internal combustion motors works - and it is like using a different language).
A program that essentially contains tens of millions of lines of code. Even if they're mostly in libraries, they're still there.
Yes, they're there, but 90+% of the code is now in isolated chunks that are easier to debug separately. That's the advantage of layered, modular code.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It is possible to write bad code in any computationally-complete language. (Corollary: Any language which makes it actually impossible to write bad code is computationally incomplete).
It's also possible to write good code in a language that lets you write bad code. Perl has a bad {and IMHO undeserved} reputation, but there are two words that will keep you safe: use strict;
There is a reason why C does not implement bounds checking. It is because the creators of C assumed any programmer either would have the sense to do so for themself, or would have a bloody good reason for wanting to do it that way. It's like a cutting tool which will let you start the motor even without all the guards in place. For the odd, freak case where you have to do something the manufacturers never thought of, it might be necessary to do things that way {think, a really unusual shaped workpiece which fouls on the guard no matter which side you try to cut it from, but which is physically big enough that you can hold it with both hands well clear of any moving machinery; two arrays where you know, from reading the compiler source code, that they will be stored one after another in memory where b[0] just happens also to be referenceable as a[200]}. The fact that I can't think of a plausible situation off the top of my head certainly doesn't mean there isn't one.
Bounds checking as a matter of course would serve only to slow things down needlessly. Yes, the ability to exceed bounds can be abused. But you don't always need the check, and UNIX/C philosophy eschews performing any action without an explicit request. Sometimes the check is implicit. For instance, if you do a % or && operation, or are reading from a type such as a char, you already know the limits within which the answer must lie; so why need your programming language re-check them for you? And if you're only reading a value from an array and you don't actually set too much store by what comes out {maybe it's just some text you're presenting to the user}, then you could quite conceivably get away without doing any bounds-checking.
Powerful tools are by definition potentially dangerous, and inherently-safe tools are by definition underpowered. But that isn't the problem. The problem is that programmers today are being brought up on "toy" languages with all the wipe-your-arse-for-you stuff, and never learning to respect what happens when you don't have all the handholding in place.
Of course it's easier to blame the language, and more so when you are trying to sell people an expensive programming language that claims to make it harder to write bad code {and quite probably harder to write code that runs on anything less than 2GHz, but that's not your concern if you don't actually sell hardware}.
PS. It's my bold prediction that before "no execute" becomes a standard feature on every processor, there will be an exploit allowing stuff labelled NX to be executed. It requires just one clueless user somewhere in the world with access to a broadband line, and ultimately will royally screw over any software that depends on NX for correct operation. More in next topic to mention this particular red herring.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The argument of "Apache is widely used and is more secure than IIS, so you can't claim that Windows is attacked more simply because it's more widely used" is somewhat true, but misses a crucial point. Server software is not (usually) subjected to the same level of user stupiduty as desktop software.
Many of the 'security' problems in Windows are not just the result of sloppy programming by Microsoft. When you combine Microsoft's lack of attention to security with the stupidity of the average user, *THAT* is where the real problems start.
I have a few friends who have bought their first computers over that past couple of years and I would set them up with a firewall, tell them to buy an AV program and set up Mozilla for web browsing and e-mail, and tell them not to use IE. And within a few months I would be getting calls from them -- their computer is slow, it's crashing, etc....
And when I would investigate, I would find that their computers were full of garbage because they clicked on every piece of crapware that they came across. And their inbox is flooded with spam because they give their email address to every program and website that asks for it.
Unfortunately, old code seems to live the longest. I know, that sounds daft, but think about it; which is easier to rip out and replace: the nice new code that you understand, or the evil, nasty, hacky arcane nonsense that was there before you even knew what 'compile' meant?
The GDI+ problem mentioned in other replies just points to the fact that, no matter how spiffy your new code is, if you rely on old nasty code in the background you're in for a world of pain. Unfortunately, as found in most businesses, a ground up rewrite is just not economically viable.
JUst to note, that the article does bring up some fairly interesting bio-diversity and software diversity issues, but fails to realise that the worlds most #1 used internet server and and smtp libraries are far less buggy and exploited than thier M$ counterparts, so the whole article tends to fall apart.
/.
it smacks of an article written to be published on
SDtimes indeed.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Here's what I mean. I have a bunch of machines at home that my kids use. They are automated up the wazoo to the extent that is possible. Real time scanners for viruses, spyware, popup blocking, firewalls, cookie scrubbers, the works. And they all work more or less to the extent they're supposed to but they require the person in the chair to take action when they shouldn't.
Why for example is it a GOOD idea for AVAST's real time scanner to tell me it found a virus and then not doing anything about it? It knows it's there, kill the damn thing. Don't give me a message popup from the system tray telling me you found it. My kids ignore it and I for one don't really want to know. And don't bother writing a log either - just email it to me once a month or something.
So the problem is that while we have these neato tools, for some odd reason the authors feel required to cripple their own tools so that we KNOW what they are doing? How stupid is that?
I call bullshit. There was at least 1 Windows upgrade that was MARKETED by Microsoft because it had X bug fixes (something like 5000). This was the primary reason to BUY the upgrade.
And if you check out the Visual Studio .NET updates, you'll see that bug fixes are not going into service packs or free updates, they are going into the next release. Check out some of the forums on .NET, developers find bugs, MS acknowledges them, and then promises to have the bug fix ready for the next release (Whidbey) *which you'll have to pay for* !!!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
he notes that the problem is largely with C/C++ and mostly because of the buffer overflow problems.
Most of the security problems that really turn into a bear with Windows aren't buffer overflows. They're layering problems. Windows doesn't have a strong distinction between different layers, it doesn't really have any internal security boundaries. It's got a complex privilege model that's wide open to privilege boosting, and applications have to be granted far too many privileges to do their normal operations... and because privileges can't be associated with applications that means a user has to be given all the privileges ANY application he uses will ever need. On top of that, "security zones" mean that if you can trick some component (the HTML control, of course) into thinking you're in the right zone it'll grant you full "local user" privileges and let you run any damn executable or script you want.
On the server side, there's all these spooky connections between application services and network services, so that you can't keep the system from leaving listening ports into important services open, and you can't firewall them off unless you want to shut down native network support completely.
THIS is the problem with Windows security. It's not just that it's a monoculture, it's a culture with security flaws baked into the APIs that can't be fixed without breaking applications.
I think the problem isn't a lack of good programmers, that's for sure. MS has the best programmers money can buy (are YOU for sale?) But their programmers have to work within the framework set down by management and marketing, and that's where some big problems get set in. The programmers cannot solve the basic problems - all they can do is try to work around them.
Many of the problems with MS products boil down to design-architecture issues that the programmers absolutely have no say over, that are decided for legal or marketing reasons. The programmers aren't the ones that decide to come up with a new, more bloated and more obfuscated set of file formats every release of office. The programmers aren't the ones that decided IE had to be split up into libraries and 'integrated' with the shell to create a legal defense. The programmers probably didn't have much to say about the general tack of MS over the years towards more and more 'integration' of code - which makes it practically impossible to do a good security audit.
They do their best to work within those decisions, and they make herculean efforts at times, I'm sure. But you can only patch a fundamentally wrongheaded design so far.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I believe that the problem is mostly that security is an afterthought. By the time everyone realizes how much work it is going to take to put security into a product, the core functionality is about ready to head to QA. By the time it is ready to head to QA, sales has already been promised a delivery date.
So the management decides to put some basic security in the product, and save the more security effort for Rev. 2. Rev. 2 then takes a really long time to materialize while they are modify the core functionality to make the product more sellable.
People who build fault-tolerant systems start with the assumption that things will go wrong, and that includes software bugs and malicious injected code. Rather than trying to make faults never happen, an impossible task in practice, the system is designed to survive in the presence of faults, and minimise the damage they do. One of the key lessons from that work is that you create real boundaries around things, and prevent the faults crossing those boundaries. All Unix-like systems tend to have at least some kind of boundaries that are enforced, and it is relatively easy to tighten them up so that when things go bad, the damage does not spread too far or too fast.
These hard boundaries are also interfaces where you have to be explicit about how the pieces fit together, and so it is easy to substitute one implementation for another, and from a different supplier. Well defined boundaries make it hard to tweak the API to dislodge inconvenient competitors. Making everything deeply intertwined makes it hard for anyone to interface to your system without your permission, but those vital barriers to the propagation of faults go away.
We are never going to eliminate all faults, but there is a lot that can be done to reduce the damage they cause by using the right underlying system architecture and attitude to the overall system design. Robust design seems to require a significant degree of openness, and I think that this is where Windows is lacking.
I don't think drivers CAN be .NET based, since they require access that the Framework doesn't allow or expose.
.NET managed code interface for a parallel port I2C adapter. As near as I can tell, there's no facility for writing managed-code drivers under Windows. On Linux (or any other OS that can run Mono or dotGNU) I can make use of the /dev/ports and /dev/mem devices to implement my functionality (albeit slowly!).
.NET I have ever seen includes information on device drivers. I don't think it can be done, at least not with .NET 1.1.
I have recently been toying with a
No book on
"Bounds checking as a matter of course would serve only to slow things down needlessly."
Then have the option to turn it on or off both globally (via a compiler switch) and locally with pragmas. Just leaving it out altogether is I think inexcusable.
"Powerful tools are by definition potentially dangerous, and inherently-safe tools are by definition underpowered."
That's why one needs both in the same toolkit. Java, Python et al are not appropriate tools for doing the things C does, hence their inclusion of mechanisms for interfacing with it. However, by the same token, C is not an efficient way of writing large end-user applications because programmers have to spend too much time micromanaging minutiae that have absolutely no bearing on what said large end-user application is supposed to be doing.
"The problem is that programmers today are being brought up on "toy" languages with all the wipe-your-arse-for-you stuff, and never learning to respect what happens when you don't have all the handholding in place."
People said exactly the same things about FORTRAN IV, C, and even assemblers in the days when "real programmers" used hex or binary. These "toy languages" isolated people from what was really going on, so they'd never actually know how "the machine" worked, and boy, would they live to regret that when they had to write some piece of code that actually depended on how long it took for the memory drum to rotate!
There is an old saying which goes thus: "Being able to bang nails in with one's fists a good carpenter does not make. The clever man uses a hammer".
Software problems generally exist because the specification was either nonexistant or poorly written, or the specification wasn't followed. Very rarely is it actual incompetance of a coder. But when a spec for a message handler, for instance, assumes that there will only be a certain length and nothing outside that spec guarantees that length, it's not the person coding that function to check for the length - s/he only has the spec by which to go (because people still haven't figured out how to not throw designs over the wall for implementation).
Complexity of a system does make things difficult, but good design mitigates a lot of problems. (Note I didn't say "eliminates" but "mitigates").
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
The C/C++/C#/Java debate is a complete red-herring.
The FA's author's analysis:
software monoculture + network + "unsafe" languages = security problemsis overly simplistic to my mind.
Imagine a world where OpenBSD (written in C) was the predominant OS, is he really saying that we would have the same problems?
My opinion is that there is no economic incentive for MS to produce an OS or applications that are robust and secure. After all we're dealing with a monopoly here which doesn't have to compete on the desktop space.
If they did, where would the "upgrade income" come from? The "upgrade income" comes from people who need more features but more importantly need the promised stability of MS's latest platform.
We were promised that the NT based XP would deliver us from the evils of the DOS based Windows (yet things have got worse), now we are promised that Longhorn will do that (I'll lay money on it that it wont).
If they produced a platform as solid as OpenBSD securitywise, then people have all of a sudden lost a good deal of incentive to upgrade and fill the MS coffers.
It beggars belief that MS with their money, programming talent and a "safe" language can't produce a solid OS. Apple can with a lot less resources, so you have to ask yourself:
"Why don't Microsoft want to produce a solid platform?"
Their business model requires that their platform is always semi-broken and the answer to all the brokenness is the next MS platform round the corner (although it never is, of course).
If they didn't have a monopoly, then this business model would come crumbling down. Yet the articles author has nothing to say about the MS monopoly, the upgrade cycle (in the commercial software world) and how it impacts security.
The Machine stops.
We actually seem to agree that Java 'would have done just as well', and this is the route they started down, but I didn't want you to (seem to) deny the point being made (which is much more valid, in this context, than all the old boring and over-stated Slashdot rubbish about monopoly and posturing and satanism).
"No, that's what happens when you employ clueless morons to write code for you."
You are, of course, right. We can aggree on that wholeheartedly.
However, it doesn't invalidate what I've said. You just detailed one effect of what I was basically saying.
The problem is that the moment someone actually believes "nah, we can't have bugs because we're protected by the holy power of Java" (or "we don't need good coders because Java/VB/whatever is easy to program"), they invariably go and hire the cheapest morons they can find.
It's not even a slippery slope argument. It's not a case of A slowly leading to B which leads to C which eventually leads to D. Here it's direct cause and effect. A straight short road from A to D.
Being able to write all their programs with 2 ex-burger-flippers paid $5 per hour is _the_ wet dream of the industry. So anything which promises to make that even remotely viable, _is_ in fact used as a justification to do just that: fire all those high paid nerds and hire the cheapest monkey in a suit.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. No matter how easy the IDE, language or libraries make it to program, they can't force an untrained monkey to understand security, do a security analysis and write secure code. The less skilled people you can use to string together OCX controlls they don't understand in VB.NET (or Java, or whatever other language), the less clue they'll also have about making it secure.
And even if the language prevents them from having straight buffer overflows, they'll find other ways to make the program even more insecure. Because they don't even understand what they're doing.
So in a sick and twisted way, as I've said, the better tools you have, the poorer programs you end up with. Among other ways, yes, because the more clueless morons get hired to use those tools.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Complex systems are difficult to debug.
That's why you should *always* do simpler systems that do one small thing, but do it *right*.
That's the first rule you learn with Unix.
Buffer overruns are a problem because you can put executable code on the stack or the heap. Most other CPU architectures have an execute bit for pages that let you make the text area read-only and executable and everything else read-write and non-executable. The I86 archetecture does not have this - if it did then this type of attacks would be impossible.
Enthusiasts and professionals get very concerned over their tools. And no wonder - their ability to do what they do well relies on the availability of quality tools (or at least, tools they are comfortable using).
Sure, a carpenter can likely hew out a basic piece with a hammer and a screwdriver. But they won't produce the quality of work that sets them apart from the average layman.
The saying "a poor workman blames his tools" certainly has a degree of truth to it. But it can lead one to overlook the importance of good tools. An importance that any craftsman will immediately recognize.
Incidently, within the depths of any tech jihad, someone will eventually utter "it's just a tool." They're right. But they miss point - the reason why people would have any passion over "just a tool."
This paper is almost complete rubbish. The bias against C/C++ is absurd. Why not blame the hammer for carpenters' injuries?
From my experience in the software industry, the biggest problem I have encountered is that management assumes that developers are unable to design any software. Instead they have business, marketing and sales people write up requirements (english majors who usually do not understand logic flow or coding). The requirements contain cases which totally break consistency and flow, creating possibilities for an error. Having worked at companies of various size, the larger the corporation the more non engineers control the design.
Another major issue is that the difference between good and average programmer is huge. Mixing of good and average programmers usually results in code that will have bugs. Average programmers don't always understand what good programmers do with their code and their additions often break the consistency of the code. This is a hard qualitative idea to explain, but I am sure many have been faced with it at one point in their life or another.
And on the final note: those that are not good at what they do always blame the tools for their problems.
> people don't apply good engineering practices to code
I've heard this argument a lot, but it's wrong.
When engineers make a new airline/bridge/circuit, they model the entire thing on a computer first. The CAD model is an unambiguous model of the plane. Important subsystems in it are modelled and analysed independently and in conjunction with the components around it.
So, if writing software was similar, we would first model the software on a computer. Oh, er, wait a moment. In an important sense, software is a design. The only unambiguous design is the actual software [otherwise we could make the design the programming language]. So, one could have a notion of starting with a fuzzy design and gradually making it clearer, but you can still end up with a bad design.
When someone designs a bad aircraft, the design is modelled, flaws are found and the design is improved. Nobody builds the thing until they feel pretty sure the design is right. However, software is often bad for the same reason that an initial design of anything else is bad. If it was equivalent to an airplane, windows 95 for instance, once designed, would never have been built. However, once the design for a piece of software is complete, one has created the software. The development money has been spent, so the makers will try to get what they can for it. It's *all* design.
High level programming languages are the most elegent way we can think of to
describe logic. We can sometimes model the *question* in a better way.
That is what a detailed spec, use cases, etc are about.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
WTF??! Using C strings and arrays, plain pointers to things, homegrown linked lists, etc is what costs extra time and effort in C++. And that's also what causes memory leaks, buffer overflows, exception unsafety and all kinds of nastiness.
We need better tools to help people avoid it, and plain C/C++ apparently isn't enough for real-world programmers not to make these mistakes.
Please don't confuse C with C++. I don't think we have seen enough real C++ in security-critical use to say for sure how sensitive it is.