oss-sec mailing list archives
Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond
From: "David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler () dwheeler com>
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 15:00:04 -0400 (EDT)
On Thu, 9 Oct 2014 10:34:49 -0700, Tracy Reed <treed () ultraviolet org> wrote:
Sure, but at least with Haskell (and the like) you have to make it very explicit that this is what you want to do.
Not in this case. A Haskell implementation of the POSIX "sh" specification, that then added function imports, could have made the same mistake just as easily.
Educating developers will be equally hard as switching to safer languages but at least it is something people will stomache getting started on.
I'm all for switching to safer languages where it makes sense; many problems are completely prevented by them. Heartbleed, for example, would have been prevented in almost all languages *except* C and C++, as I have already publicly noted here: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/heartbleed.html#safe-language But let's not oversell the tools. Shellshock was the running of data as a command in program whose *purpose* was to be a command interpreter. A rewritten Haskell version (for example) could do it just as easily. Also, I think you're underestimating the cost of language switching. It is a *big* deal to switch languages in an existing code base. Educating developers is less risky, way faster, and costs less too. --- David A. Wheeler
Current thread:
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond, (continued)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Michal Zalewski (Oct 07)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Stephane Chazelas (Oct 08)
- Re: Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Michal Zalewski (Oct 08)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Tim (Oct 08)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Michal Zalewski (Oct 08)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond David A. Wheeler (Oct 08)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Tracy Reed (Oct 08)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Tim (Oct 08)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond David A. Wheeler (Oct 08)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Tracy Reed (Oct 09)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond David A. Wheeler (Oct 09)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Pavel Labushev (Oct 09)
- Message not available
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Florian Weimer (Oct 10)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Pavel Labushev (Oct 11)
- Message not available
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Florian Weimer (Oct 12)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond John Haxby (Oct 12)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Pavel Labushev (Oct 14)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Sven Kieske (Oct 09)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Michal Zalewski (Oct 09)
- Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond Sven Kieske (Oct 09)
- liability (was: Re: Thoughts on Shellshock and beyond) Solar Designer (Oct 09)