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C can be memory-safe (2023)
(blog.erratasec.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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C Programming Language
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I don't speak C, but isn't this an extreme simplification of the issue? I thought memory could be abused in an almost infinite number of subtle ways outside of allocating it wrong. For example, improperly sanitized string inputs. I feel like if it were this easy, it would have been done decades ago.
Buffer overflows are far from the only way for improperly sanitized inputs to be a problem
Use after free, null pointer dereference, double free.
Solutions to these in C end up looking a lot like Rust.
Yes. If you disabled unions and pointer casts, basically no C code would compile.
I think this can be explained by underlining the differences between could, would, and should.
The blog states the fact that at least some C compilers already offer the necessary and sufficient tools that characterize "memory-safe" languages, and proceeds to illustrate examples. This isn't new. However, just like "memory-safe" languages enforce narrow coding styles through a happy path that is expected to prevent the introduction of some classes of vulnerabilities, leveraging these compiler features in C projects also requires the same type of approach.
This isn't new or unheard of. Some C++ frameworks are also known for supporting their own memory management and object ownership strategies, but you need to voluntarily adhere to them.