Re: EMERGENCY: new remote root exploit in UW imapd

[kragen () POBOX COM (Kragen)]

On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, Craig Spannring wrote:
> Anonymous writes:
>  > In some ways, it is depressing to find this new hole.  Programmers are
>  > still making the same mistakes they have made for years.  Doesn't anyone
>  > learn from the past?  Can strcpy() ever be used safely?  Perhaps the
>  > software development community, and certainly those writing network service
>  > daemons that run as root, should discontinue using *any* C library
>
> C should not be used for trusted programs.  The lack of true arrays
> with array bounds checking alone makes it too hazardous.

Many of the people on this list already know this, but there are
experimental bounds-checking extensions to gcc that do exactly what
you're looking for:

The first work I know of on bounds-checking for gcc was done by Richard
W. M. Jones and Paul Kelly, and is at
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~phjk/BoundsChecking.html
Greg McGary <gkm () eng ascend com> did some other work.  Announcement:
http://www.cygnus.com/ml/egcs/1998-May/0073.html
Richard Jones and Herman ten Brugge did other work.  Announcement:
http://www.cygnus.com/ml/egcs/1998-May/0557.html
Greg compares different approaches in
http://www.cygnus.com/ml/egcs/1998-May/0559.html

Kragen