[himata4113]

My biggest problem with the refusal to be memory safe is the fact that those problems end up becoming my problems when I am forced to use these applications and I have to think about how there might be a zero-click zero-day that uses an overflow in some random codec. Not as a software developer, but a regular person I want my application to be written in rust or at least use fil-c at bare minimum.

Now as a software developer I feel like this is even more important because I use libraries maintained by thousands of other developers that might also use applications that have these exploits which get their systems compromised pushing malware to thousands of other developers which end up compromising even more libraries.

I believe that memory safety should be the standard for software that thousands if not millions rely on and that it shouldn't be some political issue of X is better, Y is that, Z is something else.

But then again, social engineering is the primary source of malware spread so I don't know.

[consumer451]

It seems to me that memory safety might be the difference between the software engineering and Software Engineering. As in, an actual Engineering discipline.

However, I should probably pipe down, as I would not call myself either one.

[dns_snek]

> memory safety might be the difference between the software engineering and Software Engineering. As in, an actual Engineering discipline.

I wouldn't go that far, what matters is the finished whole. Memory safety of the finished program is a critical factor and using a memory safe language makes it easier to achieve that goal.

However simply using a memory safe language doesn't make you a "Software Engineer" any more than using a certified I-beam makes someone a "Civil Engineer". What matters is that the finished structure/program meets the explicit and implicit requirements of safety, functionality, durability, cost, etc.

Not to mention that complex reliable systems are usually engineered out of much less reliable components.

[inigyou]

Overall safety matters. Memory safety is just one factor. Log4Shell happened in Java, a GC language without pointer arithmetic.

[Ygg2]

With Fil-C and Rust the memory safety shouldn't even be discussed. It should be the bare minimum.

Presence of worse bugs won't make memory bugs disappear.

[pjmlp]

Using seat belts is just one factor. People still die while wearing one, so it should not be compulsory.

Is how this kind of arguments always get received by security folks.

[satvikpendem]

Necessary versus sufficient condition, as they say in philosophy.

[goalieca]

There are engineering standards where dynamic allocation and especially garbage collectors are banned. C is actually a perfectly approved language in these cases.

[himata4113]

There are too many opensource projects that show that even with good engineering discipline humans are flawed creatures.

Memory safety is just little thing that makes sure that when you write code at 4am that it will not leak memory via trivial mistakes such as forgetting to free something, freeing something twice or passing a freed pointer. I believe AI agents shine here the most because the they do not get tired and are getting pretty damn predictable.

[inigyou]

How many bugs in qmail though?

[kelnos]

I don't think we should set our expectations based on an extreme outlier. qmail is special, and we can't expect most software to get to its level of security/safety.

Put another way: if you have to rely on programmer skill or attention to detail in order to guarantee something, that will always be a losing bet, on average. The existence of a tiny percentage of programmers that can clear that high bar does not make it a valid strategy.

[uecker]

Splitting programs into mutually untrusting modules is a plausible alternative to memory safety in programming languages.

Also in a program similar to qmail, memory safety alone is not sufficient, a lot of bugs in sendmail were related to complexity issues.

[pjmlp]

If only there was an OS design architecture that would follow such approach from the ground up....

[inigyou]

Why can't we write everything like qmail?

[himata4113]

It had one bad cve it seems, but that's exactly what I mean. It only takes one mistake, of course you can learn and never make those mistakes again, however, that is an unrealistic expectation in software that receives hundreds of feature updates a year especially when it comes to core applications as basic as communication when it wants to support image previews, reels and whatnot.

[Brian_K_White]

There will always be one, so "it only takes one" is meaningless and invalid. That leaves less is better than more, and any form of less is as good as any other form of less.

[himata4113]

This is pretty hard to argue since for example: WireGuard is a finished piece of software. It gets: no feature updates, was designed in-full before a single line of code was written and has stood the test of time. You cannot compare that to some desktop application that has a thousand features with 100's more added every year.

[inigyou]

Some Rust programs also had RCE CVEs.

[NBJack]

If as a user you're willing to pay these library/application owners and premium to do so, by all means; this is a reasonable demand. But short of a massive campaign to educate and change minds, I can't see the average user caring enough.

[himata4113]

My biggest gripe honestly is businesses rather than any particular opensource project, opensource projects can often get away with these issues getting caught by the many eyes looking at them before they ever make it to mainline.

[inigyou]

But they usually don't? heartbleed should have put that idea to rest once and for all. The many eyes don't exist.

[userbinator]

You will never change my mind.

[benj111]

So you have a dogmatic belief, not based on evidence then.

[userbinator]

The evidence is clear, "safety" paranoia is leading to increasing authoritarianism.

[uecker]

As a user you should be far more worried about running up-to-date software and supply chain risks rather than zero-days related to memory safety.

[naasking]

You wouldn't have to worry so much about running up to date software if memory safety were pervasive.

[uecker]

This is wrong as there are many other safety issues to worry about.

[inigyou]

But memory safety is one of the big ones.

[uecker]

Most people I know that had security incidents did not have this because of memory safety issues. But it does not matter, even without memory safety issues out of the picture, you would need to update your software and be wary of supply chain attacks.

(Actually, I can't remember a single incident where somebody I knew was directly affected by a memory safety issue)

[Pooge]

> I can't remember a single incident where somebody I knew was directly affected by a memory safety issue

That doesn't mean the issue is nonexistent. See this article by Microsoft that shows the percentages of fixed CVEs that are related to memory safety.[1]

[1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/blog/2019/07/we-need-a-...

[inigyou]

Memory corruption is among the hardest things to exploit but also the most powerful. It used to be easier before things like ASLR and NX-stack.