Rendered at 14:11:38 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
AlotOfReading 13 hours ago [-]
SAW/Cryptol are amazingly easy to use compared to other formal methods tools. It's a shame that C++ is still popular in high assurance spaces, because the tooling for it and the ability to write safe code is so much worse than C these days.
pjmlp 6 hours ago [-]
When did C got safe strings and arrays?
Ideally neither C nor C++ should be used when security matters.
Nokinside 3 hours ago [-]
Explain to someone like me who uses C in safety-critical software in aerospace and defense why not?
For me, choosing the language is not enough. It's the tooling that goes far beyond the language that is important for safety and quality of compiler and runtime. C has very mature tooling options. So does ADA.
Explain to us why you are not allowed to use 100% of ISO C, without certification processes that castrate C to the point it feels like Ada 83 with curly brackets.
Proceses that outside high integrity computing no one is willing to make themselves go through without legal requirements and liability.
Most of it because during 1980's it was cheaper to advocate for C plus certification than pay for Ada compilers and developers.
Nokinside 2 hours ago [-]
Because we want to write correct code. We want to verify the absence of many types of errors where amateurish language war stuff like Rust vs C does not even scratch the surface.
I would propose that we change your original statement "Ideally neither C nor C++ should be used when security matters." into:
"Ideally people who don't care about secrurity should not write code when security matters."
Can we agree that this is better than talking about programming languages?
pjmlp 45 minutes ago [-]
Except security matters everywhere in modern computing, and the world is full of amateurs that call themselves engineers, writing C without any of those tools, or legal consequences.
FabHK 9 hours ago [-]
Had totally forgotten that Apple had rolled out post-quantum crypto (ML-KEM and ML-DSA, FIPS 203 and FIPS 204, respectively) already back in 2024. [1]
Slightly off topic, but it's great to see "crypto" to mean cryptography, helping users to keep their data secure, and not as so often these days those silly cryptocurrency crime tokens.
The missing-step bug in early ML-DSA is the perfect case for SAW. rare inputs that pass code review because the line that should be there doesn't look absent, it looks like the next line is correct. tests wouldn't catch it unless someone happened to roll exactly the right inputs.
FiloSottile 4 hours ago [-]
I would really like to look at the bug and whether we could have caught it with conventional testing, but it doesn't look like Apple actually disclosed it?
throwaway85825 11 hours ago [-]
Verified crypto is important but apple still doesnt take parser security seriously enough. They know it's insecure and offer lockdown mode instead of fixing it.
ethical 3 hours ago [-]
Can't wait to find all the holes in the github code, part-ay time!
Ideally neither C nor C++ should be used when security matters.
For me, choosing the language is not enough. It's the tooling that goes far beyond the language that is important for safety and quality of compiler and runtime. C has very mature tooling options. So does ADA.
https://www.absint.com/astree/index.htm
Abstract Interpretation in a Nutshell https://www.di.ens.fr/~cousot/AI/IntroAbsInt.html
Proceses that outside high integrity computing no one is willing to make themselves go through without legal requirements and liability.
Most of it because during 1980's it was cheaper to advocate for C plus certification than pay for Ada compilers and developers.
I would propose that we change your original statement "Ideally neither C nor C++ should be used when security matters." into:
"Ideally people who don't care about secrurity should not write code when security matters."
Can we agree that this is better than talking about programming languages?
Slightly off topic, but it's great to see "crypto" to mean cryptography, helping users to keep their data secure, and not as so often these days those silly cryptocurrency crime tokens.
[1] https://security.apple.com/blog/imessage-pq3/