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."

Comments

Sometimes you gotta take a look around.

[Sheetrock]

This brings up a complaint I've got with the way the industry works nowadays, monoculture being something many large companies seem to share.

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.

Re:Sometimes you gotta take a look around.

[steveha]

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.

There is something to this, I guess. But that's the real trick, isn't it? The problem is that real life isn't like programming class in college.

In class you get an assignment like "write a program that sorts text lines using the quicksort algorithm." This simple statment is a pretty solid specification; it tells you everything you need to know about how to solve the problem. How many features does this project have? As described, exactly one. You might get fancy and add a case-insensitive flag; that's another feature.

In real life, you get a general description of a project, but the project implies dozens to hundreds of features. Your users may not even know exactly what they want. "Make something like the old system, but easier to use." You might spend a great deal of time designing some elaborate system, and then when the users actually see it they might send you back to the drawing board.

So the best approach is generally to try stuff. You might make a demo system that shows how your design will work, and try that out without writing any code. But you might also code up a minimal system that solves some useful subset of the problem, and test that on the users.

Another shining feature of the "useful subset" approach to a project is that if something suddenly changes, and instead of having another month on the project you suddenly have two days, you can ship what you have and it's better than nothing. As I read in an old programming textbook, 80% of the problem solved now is better than 100% of the problem solved six months from now.

Note that even if you are starting with a subset and evolving it towards a finished version, you still need to pay attention to the design of your program. For example, if you can design a clean interface between a "front end" (user interface) and a "back end" (the engine that does the work), then if the users demand a complete overhaul of the UI, it won't take nearly as long as if you had coded up a tangled mess.

One only has to compare the security woes of Microsoft or Linux with the rock-solid experience of OpenBSD for an example.

I'm not sure this is the best example you could have chosen. Linux and *BSD build on the UNIX tradition, and UNIX has had decades of incremental improvements. Some bored students in a computer lab figure out a way to crash the system; oops, fix that. After a few years of that, you hammer out the worst bugs.

But UNIX did start with a decent design, much more secure than the Windows design. Windows was designed for single users who always have admin privileges over the entire computer; it has proven to be impossible to retrofit Windows to make it as secure as it should have been all along. The Microsoft guys would have done well to have studied UNIX a bit more, and implemented some of the security features (even if the initial implementation were little more than a stub). As Henry Spencer said, "Those who do not understand UNIX are compelled to reinvent it. Poorly."

steveha

Re:managed code

[omicronish]

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.

Blaming the language is just an excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not just C/C++

[TheLink]

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++?

Re:Popularity not the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Blaming the language...

[Moraelin]

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.

I would agree with TFA if not for one thing....

[Vladan]

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

Re:managed code

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not just C/C++

[themo0c0w]

The problem is that the process of turning source code into binary code is opaque to the developer. He puts some code through the compiler and some binary object code pops out.

Interpreted environments have the additional benefit that they run inside of a sandbox that is abstracted from the hardware by some large degree. Because of this, the running code never actually touches the CPU directly.

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.

Re:he's right about some things

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

What is ultimately interesting is that if IE was not as popular as it is, the bugs would still exist, and it would still be exploited. The only difference is that it wouldn't have the impact that it does now.

The interesting thing is that C/C++ is not to blame. C and C++ provide enough means to avoid buffer overflows as they do the means to create them. But in any software company, getting products out in time takes precedence over good code. That is the problem. The language used only changes the exploits and vulnerabilities available, not the fact that they exist.

The only way to reduce such security concerns is to change the culture in the software world.

Re:Not just C/C++

[Baki]

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.

Sure, blame C and C++

[Sivar]

"...and he notes that the problem is largely with C/C++ and mostly because of the buffer overflow problems."

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.

Re:Not just C/C++

[Brandybuck]

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.

His reasoning looks very flawed to me

[jesterzog]

His argument, spelled out, seems to be:

• MSIE and Firefox are both written in C/C++, therefore:
• MSIE and Firefox both have lots of buffer overflow related bugs.
• MSIE suffers more because it's more popular and more homogeneous, allowing worms to spread more easily.
• People can flock to Firefox, but if this happens then Firefox will become more popular and more homogeneous. Consequently,
• There's no point flocking to Firefox. Give in to software monoculture, and wait for an answer that he already admits probably hasn't been invented yet.

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.

Author's slant

[catwh0re]

the author tends to slant on it being more a problem of buffer overflows from the C/C++ etc languages.

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.

Re:C#

[nyda]

The real problem isn't C bufferoverflows. It's Microsofts ultra-agressive stragetegy to purge every single piece of non-Microsoft software from the marked. During the browser wars, Microsofts one single aim was add more and more features to IE. Security, if at all, didn't matter a lot. What was important was to get another release as soon as possible. As long as Microsoft maintains it's hostile strategy, it will never produce any piece of software that can be considered safe. Not even if they'd switch to managed code entirely.

Re:Not just C/C++

[archeopterix]

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.

I am sure we all know the theory, but to me it's like saying "you avoid bugs by following good coding practices".

I am sure that Microsoft, Linux, Apache and whatnot other programmers know the theory too. Too bad that buffer overflows still happen.

Re:Blaming the language...

[gadget junkie]

"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....

Re:Blaming the language...

[Moraelin]

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.

Monoculture and C?

[jandersen]

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.

Re:ActiveX

[Moraelin]

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.

Re:Not just C/C++

[geg81]

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.

Not C#, integration

[marcovje]

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

Buffer overflows

[12357bd]

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.

Re:managed code

[steve_l]

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.

Has NOTHING to do with language

[Hammer]

How many of you can honestly say "I have never, ever ignored a return code"?
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;

1. good design practice.
   
2. good coding practice.
   
3. good testing practice.
   
4. a healthy dose of paranoia in your good practices.
   
5. teamwork with peer review.
   
6. a common realization that noone is perfect.
   
7. stop spreading blame and start fixing the problem.
   

Re:Software Monoculture? Huh

[loquitus]

I agree, Raging Guppy. I have worked with C and C++ software in Linux, OS/2, and Windows environments for the longest time. I can appreciate the fact the author is trying to push... that C/C++, by their nature, allow the possibility for memory corruption and overruns that can be potential security breaches. I will remind you that Linux servers are used extensively and just as much as Microsoft servers in many cases, if not more. These servers are not vulnerable to the problsm that exist on the Microsoft platform. Microsoft has had YEARS to straighten out IE, but has failed to... in fact, the software gets worse as time goes on. It seems analogous to an old canoe with holes that keep popping up because of rotting wood... for how long can you keep patching it till all you have are patches keeping it together? While writing this, I got 3 IE popups come out of nowhere! I am not even using IE, nor have I ever, in the past 1 year. I use firefox, exclusively. Why is this firefox program already super-ceding my wildest (albeit lowered) expectations of IE? Why is Microsoft not improving on things that have existed as problems over the course of 3 or more different OS revisions? These are but many of the myriad of unanswered questions that Microsoft executives always avoid answering somehow.

Re:C#

[SillyNickName4me]

You said:

> could not develop commercial quality software on the system since we were at the mercy of Sun for the language, the runtime, and everything els

And a bit later you said:

> Now a virtual machine architecture which supports JIT compiling to different architectures with a consistent set of class libraries and support for multiple different languages including C#, C++, Java, Visual Basic, Cobol, etc... that is useful.

Now the virtual machine and its tools etc still come from one provider, and oen that has a proven track record of screwing over everyone who develops a succesfull product based on its technology instead of from a company that at least has a track record of caring about its customers.

Pleaase tell me how that is better in any way? The multiple langauge support I guess.....

Oh, and you could of course point at mono... but that would mean you'd first have to accept that you can also get java from others then SUN, ie, try IBM, GNU, Blackdown (http://www.blackdown.org/).

Re:Blaming the language...

[ajs318]

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.

It's NOT mostly buffer overflows!

[argent]

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.

System architecture matters more than code

[Shirotae]

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.

Re:Blaming the language...

[ThosLives]

Bugs in the code are simple to fix. The more problematic issue is that often times the bugs are in the design. Part of the problem is that people don't apply good engineering practices to code. I've never heard of a software FMEA (Failure Mode Effects Analysis) or things of that nature. Do people do boundary diagrams for a piece of software? Are all the noise factors analyzed? Do people conform to the specifications? Do people unit test their code?

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").

Re:Blaming the language...

[Moraelin]

"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.