[UncleMeat]

Programs written in memory-unsafe languages are riddled with RCE vulns. This is true even for software written by companies that hire the very best security engineers in the world. The consequences of such software that processes untrusted input is more than mere annoyance. This sort of behavior is the root of RATs operated by both criminals and oppressive states. It does not matter if your program is intended for something as seemingly non-critical as text messaging - it will still be used to cause terrible harm.

I do not think that the lock is a reasonable comparison here, because exploitation of software scales so so so much more effectively than picking locks. One exploit easily scales to millions of devices. So the harm caused by vulnerable software has a much higher ceiling than the harm caused by a weak lock.

[bagels]

The point of the lock analogy is to point out the absurdity of analogies here.

[UncleMeat]

Then drop the analogy.

If I install software that was written in C++ on a device I own and it processed untrusted content then I put myself as fairly major risk of all sorts of harm. There are only two resolutions for this problem:

1. No more memory-unsafe languages on security boundaries.

2. Extremely effective sandboxing and process isolation.

#2 has proven very hard. But we know how to do #1. We just need to spend the effort.