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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?
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.
Glancing over a book called "Writing Secure Code" by Howard and LeBlanc, from the Microsoft Press and that touts the following quote on the front cover:
"Required reading at Microsoft - Bill Gates"
Makes me wonder if blaming the language is easier than the possiblity of the code being more sloppy than it should. The book recommends many ways to avoid buffer overflows and such.
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
Any compiled language is susceptible to security holes. 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. Things like memory offsets, code areas, data areas, and all these esoteric issues that need to be dealt with are simply left to the compiler to decide.
Unlike interpreted languages which for the most part implement all code as either line-by-line interpretation or in bytecode form, compiled languages talk directly to the CPU. 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.
Things like the "no-execute" bit on modern CPUs provide an additional layer of security and prevent purposely damaged code from running directly on the CPU. However, until operating systems implement this in their own code, any application that does not want to adhere to the no-exec flag does not have to. This is like flock on Unix which only sets a file locking flag which applications are expected to obey rather than true file locking as implemented on other systems.
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.
Can someone confirm this at NetCraft?
...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
From netcraft:
Apache 67.92%
Sure... Minority Product.
Author obviously isn't the most impartial of writers.
[...]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.
The Lessons of Software Monoculture
by Jeff Duntemann
November 1, 2004 --
Last summer, much was made of Slate author Paul Boutin's harangue in his June 30, 2004 "Webhead" column. Boutin basically told his readers to drop Microsoft's Internet Explorer like a hot rock and move to Mozilla's Firefox, because of the increasingly nasty security holes turning up in IE. Problem is, Slate is owned by Microsoft.
Ouch.
It really has gotten that bad, and it's easy to be left with the impression that Microsoft creates lousy software, rotten with bugs that allow the black hats to break into our networks and bring the global Internet to its knees. The anti-Microsoft tomato tossers insist that if only Microsoft cleaned up its products, we'd be rid of the security holes and the black hats who thrive on them.
It's not that simple. Microsoft has some of the best programmers in the world working on its products, and books like "Writing Solid Code" from the Microsoft developer culture are seen as classics that belong on every programmer's shelf. Nonetheless, Microsoft software has bugs; all software has bugs, which is a crucial point that I'll return to later.
What we have to understand is that our current problems with Internet Explorer have less to do with bugs than with success. When a product has 90% of a huge worldwide market, there will be problems. It doesn't matter what the product is, and it matters only a little how good it is. What matters is that Internet Explorer is virtually the sole organism in an ecosystem that the world's technology industry depends on. When IE catches a cold, the networked world gets pneumonia.
This metaphor from biology is called software monoculture. Ubiquitous high-bandwidth communication has turned the world of computing from countless independent islands into a single global ecosystem. The fewer distinct organisms at work within this ecosystem, the easier it is for a bug--any bug--to become a threat to the health of the whole.
Worms and viruses that depend on these bugs replicate and travel automatically, and unless they can assume that the next system is identical (bugs and all) to the one they're leaving, they can't propagate as quickly nor do as much damage. If only one in 20 systems allowed such worms and viruses to take hold (rather than nine out of 10) it's doubtful that they could ever achieve any kind of critical mass, and would be exterminated before they got too far.
Software monoculture happens for a lot of reasons, only a few of them due to Microsoft's sales and marketing practices. In the home market, nontechnical people see safety in numbers: They want to be part of a crowd so that when something goes wrong, help will be nearby, among family, friends, or a local user group.
In corporate IT, monoculture happens because IT doesn't want to support diversity in a software ecosystem. Supporting multiple technologies costs way more than supporting only one, so IT prefers to pick a technology and force its use everywhere. Both of these issues are the result of free choices made for valid reasons. Monoculture is the result of genuine needs. Technological diversity may be good, but it costs, in dollars and in effort.
As if that weren't bad enough, there is another kind of software monoculture haunting us, far below the level of individual products--down, in fact, at the level of the bugs themselves.
If you give reports of recently discovered security holes in all major products (not merely Microsoft's) a very close read, you'll find a peculiar similarity in the bugs themselves. Most of them are "buffer overflow exploits," and these are almost entirely due to the shortcomings of a single programming language: C/C++. (C and C++, are really the same language at the core, where these sorts of bugs happen.) Virtually all software written in the United States is written in C/C++. This includes both Windows and Linux, IE and Firefox. A recent exploit turned up in Firefox that was almost identical to one
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.
Obviously it's all the fault of C++... because no other vendor but Microsoft uses this obscure and arcane language...
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.
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
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.
Being the most popular always came with negativity. Honestly, why would anyone care about writing virii, worms and other means of computer assault on Linux. It fills an extremely small gap in the number of consumer desktops used worldwide. It is more fun to hash the Big Redmond Giant.
You don't make something opensource if you wanna make money. That is a straight up fact. Have there been successes? Oh yeah, there have been plenty. If you wanna make the big bucks you keep it in house so no one can profit off your work. However, your company can't make money if you are continuously working on a product and not selling it. So does Microsoft release buggy code? Yeah.
It is a matter of money. Bill Gates didn't start Microsoft because he wanted to touch lives, he made the company to make money. That is the general reason anyone starts a company. Dollar signs.
So you have deadlines. A good example is the rush developement and release of EQ2. Hell you can even compare it to any EQ expansion. Full of bugs, exploits, instability, etc. Why? Money. You don't make money programming to make it perfect. You make money by having a product good enough that people will use it. Why else has EQ maintained a stable subscription base over five years. Granted there have been jumps in either direction but it has been stable enough to open more servers.
Expansions like Gates of Discord, Luclin, Omens of War and Planes of Power all had more than their fair share of bugs. Money is the underlying issue. The expansions were good enough to release but not solid.
The same can be said for Microsoft. Windows is good enough but can always be fixed through patches. If they are gonna keep it in house forever, then they will never make money.
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'
C/C++ as a language has bugs.
Actually, any program has bugs.
IE and Firefox are both programs written in C/C++.
Therefore,
1. What is wrong with IE is wrong with Firefox
2. The quality of coding is mostly irrelevant to the quality of a program, it being mostly dependent (inversely) on how many people use it.
3. If Firefox gains market share, it will have bugs! It has to! You'll see!!
Listen to little brother crying...
I don't want to read
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
I'm not convinced this man, Microsoft or anyone else for that matter knows why they have the problems they do. If they did, I'm sure Microsoft would be very interested in obtaining this information so they could make higher quality software.
My guess is, and since I do not work at Microsoft or know their culture first hand, is they are a bloated, over managed institution that provides a fertile breeding ground for errors to compound. It's like NASA in some respects, where you just have too many layers of accountability which allows many things to slip through the cracks.
I'm not sure it's fair to blame the programming languages used for errors. Bad code is often proclaimed as a major short coming of C++, but in the end it comes down to the design, programming and process. Many very large and successful software projects have been constructed using C/C++, so I find it a lame excuse to blame the language.
One big problem that many agree on is in the case of Microsoft there is a large market pressure to release things before they are ready. This allows you to get your product out to customers who will then be less likely to use a computers product, even if superior, but released later. Everyone knows the price of bug fixes goes up after the software is released, but I'm sure the mathematicians at companies like Microsoft have calculated the bug cost to profit ratio in releasing the software in particular states and the most profitable option is taken, regardless of acceptance.
I would be interested in knowing what Microsoft's error to lines of code ratio is. Larger than typical, smaller? I mean, Microsoft apparently has really good talent working for them. You would imagine they would produce really good software. What gives?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
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!
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.
After further review, the main reason they have error and exploit prone software is because they can. They don't care because it does not effect their sales at all. I'm sure they would prefer better systems, but really it is not a priority. The real priority is stomping out competitors with their monopolistic strategy.
This is the very reason we have antitrust laws. Face it, Microsoft doesn't have to make quality software because they own everything. They won't strive to make error resistant software until they are forced to.
The best part is, everyone has to pay for this through tech departments, maintenance, paid updates and general time spent fixing things as well as data loss, etc,..except Microsoft.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
"A poor workman blames his tools"
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
The same old canard is being recycled again here... if only OS X, GNU/Linux, et al were more popular, they'd be plagued by security holes just like Windows. Anybody who's thought about this for more than ten seconds knows this is crap for a single reason: not all software coded in the same language (C-ish variants, in this case) is created equally. Some software is just designed badly.
Just as a f'rinstance, here are three aspects of Windows that show just how much design, not installed base, drives vulnerabilities:
None of these issues have anything to do with the language they were coded in. For that matter, they could have been done in .NET. But they do help explain how certain design choices have helped create the Windows Security Pandemic. That monoculture's one hell of a petri dish.
My point here is not to trumpet the marvelous advantages of OS X (or, say, Linux) over Windows. It is simply this: there is no Law that says that the number of vulnerabilities automatically increases with popularity but without regard to design. "Duntemann's Assertion" (aka Ballmer's Baked Wind) ain't like Moore's Law.
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
The article says that IE is exploited so often because it is so popular. If Mozilla were as popular as IE, would it be just as often exploited?
It would not.
There are several reasons, but the biggest one is that Microsoft added some major features without ever considering the security implications. IE can install software on your system; this means you can use IE to implement Windows Update, which is kind of cool, but it also means that an exploit can use IE to put worms and viruses on your system. Firefox and the other web browsers do not have special permission from the OS to install things. In short, Microsoft spent a great deal of time and effort to tangle IE into the system, and that means that compromising IE compromises the system.
Microsoft was well served, for years, by a focus on features. Word 2.0 could be Word 1.0 plus a hundred new features; no need to redesign, just paste the features on top. As long as the applications ran on unconnected computers, this wasn't particularly a problem. Then as networking became more important, they still got away with it because a corporate intranet is still a pretty tame environment.
But now Microsoft software is out in the wild and wooly Internet and it isn't pretty. Features that were harmless or even useful in a private corporate intranet became big problems: apps that auto-execute scripts; the "Windows popup" service; remote execution; file sharing; dozens to hundreds of features, little and big, that were pasted on without any worrying about security.
Microsoft employs tens of thousands of smart people. They will improve their software, eventually. They need to start designing security in, and they need to give their developers and testers time to get the security really right, rather than trying to patch all the holes after release.
P.S. I think that another reason the free software is usually better designed falls out from the fact that free software is usually the work of small teams. Microsoft can write big specs and then have large teams go to work on them; if the teams aren't careful, their work can be a tangled mess. The free software projects tend to have clean, modular interfaces; this is partly because so often different pieces are coded up by people who don't even know each other. Also, the free software community values good design and good code, while Microsoft values features developed and shipped on time. (Good design and good code help the features to work and to ship on time, but for Microsoft the shipping is what is important.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
A far far better and more informative read IMHO is The Cathedral and The Bazaar. Beware, it's on the long side.
This gives an interesting insight into the open source model through taking over an open source project. It presents lessons learnt, and corresponding cardinal rules when running such a project. It also outlines quite effectively why open source is a viable means to develop quality software, despite the author's initial reservations. In C or C++ even.
Jeff argues that monocultures are inevitable. This is not true. There are mechanisms in place in this country for breaking up monopolies. These techniquest have been used for nearly 100 years, since the presidency of Theodore Rosevelt. Using them in the past has brought great benefit to both consumers and businesses. In particular, one could break up Microsoft by splitting the application group from the OS group. One could furthermore split the browser out of the OS. Much of Jeff's argument depends on the false premise that monocultures in the computer world are inevitable, and can't be avoided. Take this point out, and the article has a very different flavor.
I have been using M$ products from dos 3.3 to the present, and only in the last few years have I connected to the internerd. If the problem with M$ software was really all down to its ubiquity as a target for all the malware then you would expect that standalone pc's running M$ OS and apps would work fine. Not so. It has always been bug-filled, poorly designed and badly executed. Even the wordprocessing which has been through umpteen generations in still far from a quality product.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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.
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.
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?
Better compilers have a role to play. There was a great deal of work done on Ada compilers to be more intelligent about generating code for error checks. This greatly reduces the speed penalty for safe code.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
2. Microsoft's Marketing - Yes, Microsoft are now a victim of their own lies as a result of convincing the public at large that their products are easy to use & maintain and that PCs never go wrong.
As an example, I just built a PC for a friend of mine who has never really worried about computers until it became apparent that her son needed Internet access to do some of his school homework. The sheer amount of information overload I had to give her was just frightening - update and run rhe virus checker regularly, update Windows regularly, update spyware programs regularly, don't use insecure passwords, don't duplicate passwords across different applications, etc. I ended up typing out 3 pages of hints and tips for her in the end.
3. User ignorance and greed - This follows on from 2. because far too many people have fallen for the Microsoft hype and have no clear understanding of how to keep themselves secure when on the Internet. Add to this that everyone wants something for nothing and the result is a whole heap of ignoramuses file-sharing all manner of nasty programs purely because they want their free music.
I don't care what anyone says but this will never happen with Linux. Linux will never be a mono-culture because the fact is that installing and using Linux automatically creates a learning curve meaning that anyone who uses it immediately starts becoming a more knowledgeable computer user. Sure, it takes a long time to become an expert but when you do, it is relatively easy to maintain a system to only run the services you need and to keep those updated. That's why viruses will never spread through a Linux user base because no two Linux machines are every entirely alike and because Linux users don't suffer from the same ignorance that plagues the Windows community.
I, for one, welcome it. I do not want inexperienced users flocking to use Linux purely because of the cool factor. The fact is that moving from Windows to Linux is like changing from being a child to an adult - the first step is to accept that you are responsible for your actions, not anyone else.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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
buffer overflows are only a small part of the problem!!! Microsoft came up with some lame ass BOF protection in their service pack 2 and their propaganda dept. is trying to convince us they solved something!
Today there are still format strings, integer overflows and the BIGGEST part of the problem is default passwords, false advertising, no liability, poor application security, security product vendors, SQL injections and just plain stupidity!
Just take a look at the abstract of my speech at syscan '04 (it's at the bottom of the program page.)
Information Security in Banking: The illusion of Safety by Anthony Zboralski
This presentation will focus on ways to defeat a banks security byways of deception, taking advantage of specific subtleties in human behavior and the bank's network of trust. This session will include three real-life case studies:
Penetration testing major Asian banks; the speaker will show why most security mechanisms can give a false of safety and demonstrate how an attacker can ensure rapid ownership of the most up to date, patched and secure systems without using a single 0 day exploits.
Auditing the security of core banking systems. The speaker will give real examples of insider hacking and fraud (erasure of loan files, manipulation of interest rate and foreign exchange data, vendor tempering with production environment, ATM backdoors, bypassing AS/400 security, etc.
Finally, the speaker will present the results of his Jakarta/RI Wireless Security Survey 2003 and 2004 including disturbing screenshots of ATM transactions and multi-million dollar wire transfers which broadcasted in clear text over wireless networks without the banks knowledge.
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.
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).
From the FAQ:
"In no particular order, OpenVMS components are implemented using Bliss, Macro, Ada, PLI, VAX and DEC C, Fortran, UIL, VAX and Alpha SDL, Pascal, MDL, DEC C++, DCL, Message, and Document. And this is certainly not a complete list. However, the rumor is NOT true that an attempt was made to write pieces of OpenVMS in every supported language so that the Run-Time Libraries could not be unbundled. (APL, BASIC, COBOL and RPG are just some of the languages NOT represented!)"
Peter
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.
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
...and here's what I have to say about it:
...) or anything as trivial as that can be without bugs, adding complexity doesn't mean adding bugs along with it. It has been shown time and time again that many exploit possibilities are visible in the source code simply because the writers are using unsafe coding practices (think gets();). With those facts in mind, it is conceptually possible to write bug-free, exploit-resistant code. The fact that the author of the article states otherwise doesn't make it true. The fact that the author states otherwise is an attempt to convince the reading public that we should expect and accept bugs rather than strive to a loftier goal. (There will be dirt in the world, so let's all live in filth happily... there will be disease in the world, so forget about prevention.)
The writer's attitude about software is simply all wrong and too tollerant.
Statements like "all software has bugs" is utterly ridiculous! There is software out there whose claim to fame is being bug-free/exploit free and continually strive to keep it that way. (Think Qmail and the same group's DNS solution.) Further, if it's possible that a program that can acquire a user's input and then print it all over the screen (think back to the says of BASIC: INPUT "Enter your name", A$
And I don't think that blaming the programming language is the right answer either. C/C++ are not inherently insecure languages. Can secure and safe code be written in these languages? Hell yeah. That would be like saying the French are rude because they speak French. Ridiculous. What is the author's intent in writing this article? I have to wonder...
"...software monoculture isn't good but it isn't bad... it's just the way it is so accept it. It's the programming language's fault not the company or the people who use it..." Can these messages possibly be true?
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.
As it goes I did - I used Visual J++ before it was even released, back in the day, and supported Microsoft's adaptations (the COM-binding ones at least) to the technology and was sad about Sun's position, which I followed closely.
Now that we've cleared that up (and F*** YOU, ignorant moderator), can I state again that BEFORE the legal dispute (which has nothing to do with this thread) there were reasons Microsoft was interested in Java over Visual C++ (which I used to develop) that continue to this day, sadly in a wholly divergent language rather than a variant implementation.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
He assumes that if everyone runs away from IE (or MS in general), that they will all be running to the same thing, and create another monoculture.
The idea is to NOT have a monoculture. To have an environment where there are *many* competing platforms and applications, and (becuase they all comply with certain published standards for file and network data formats) any individual (person or business) can choose from among many alternatives, and still be able to communicate with and send and receive data to/from individuals who chose something else.
*Eliminate* the monoculture. The solution is not for MS to fix its bugs. The solution is for MS to not have a monopoly (wether they jump or are pushed)
MS biggest fear is that once they are a monopoly, they will lose *all* market share (and to be honest, IMNSHO, rightfully so, their stuff is crap). MS is desperately afraid of having to compete on the technical merits of their products. Its something they never had to do before.
C# would not have happened without the legal difficulties of Java. Without the legal difficulties, Microsoft would either _own_ Java, or have _destroyed_ Java. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
The parent post is NOT saying that you can "design away bugs". In fact, the parent specifically says that bugs cannot be eliminated. The idea is to contain bugs and malicious code so that they can do a minimum of damage.
I can download a malicious or buggy Java applet through a web page. The amount of damage it can do is minimal since it has to ask permission to access my system and it runs in a user-level managed environment.
If I download a malicious or buggy Windows executable and run it then I am basically screwed. By default Windows provides no containment for native code. An application can erase my hard drive or crash my OS.