bumper sticker slogan for secure software

[pmeunier at cerias.purdue.edu (Pascal Meunier)]

On 7/20/06 11:58 AM, "Florian Weimer" <fw at deneb.enyo.de> wrote:

> * der Mouse:
>
> > > > Absolute security is a myth.  As is designing absolutely secure
> > > > software.
> >
> > > I have high hopes in formal methods.
> >
> > All formal methods do is push bugs around.  Basically, you end up
> > writing in a higher-level language (the spec you are formally verifying
> > the program meets).  You are then subject to the bugs present in *that*
> > "program" (the spec) and the bugs present in the "compiler" (the formal
> > verifier).
>
> But people are forced to spend more time with the code, which
> generally helps them (in particular smart people) to eradicate bugs.
> Another way to achieve the same thing is to freeze the code base and
> let it mature over decades, but I don't see the business model for
> that.

Also, writing it twice with different languages, especially at different
levels of abstraction, makes it less likely that the same bugs will appear
in both.  You can choose the higher level language so that it has great
expressive power exactly for the things that are a pain to capture and
verify (and thus a source of bugs) in the lower-level language.  Last time I
checked, formal methods were even able to catch design errors in some
networking protocols.  But you're right, they are not absolutely perfect
because the tools and operators aren't, etc...  That doesn't mean they can't
help a great deal.  I have great hopes for their usefulness.  Maybe some day
they will help so much that the distinction between what they can produce
and absolutely secure software will become too small to matter.  Whether
we'll still be alive when that happens is another question.

Pascal