Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 30th Aug 2011 17:29 UTC, submitted by Dale Smoker
"What would an operating system look like it if were redesigned with security in mind? Joanna Rutkowska thinks she has the answer with the development of Qubes OS. We sit down for an interview with Joanna to discuss the way Qubes OS augments security."
Thread beginning with comment 487953
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2011-01-28
sakeniwefu,
"There is no language safer than C in a Unix-like environment, because their shortcomings are well understood by anyone who has taken the time to learn about them."
I say this as a knowledgeable C developer...it is far easier to corrupt the process in C than many of the other languages around.
Even though I code very defensively, I sometimes end up writing bugs. These can be as "harmless" as following the wrong code path and functions returning wrong answers (these errors will happen in any language), or they can corrupt the heap and stack (these errors would have been prevented/caught with safe languages).
"Saying that C isn't secure because of buffer overflows is a bit silly nowadays."
C doesn't imply the existence of buffer overflows, however many languages do imply the non-existence of them.
I often prefer C never-the-less, but it takes a great deal of effort to make it safe under all conceivable conditions.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/08/13 14:57 UTC
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/07/13 11:40 UTC
This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
Linked by nfeske on 05/31/13 10:12 UTC
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/29/13 16:59 UTC
At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!More Features »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2008-02-26
There is no language safer than C in a Unix-like environment, because their shortcomings are well understood by anyone who has taken the time to learn about them.
Saying that C isn't secure because of buffer overflows is a bit silly nowadays.
Memory corruption attacks are going the way of the dodo. The few still working, rely on lazy implementations of exploit prevention technologies or evil designs such as self-modifying-code and custom memory management. All high level management decisions which can be fixed, or not far away from C level.
Most security bugs being talked about in OpenBSD misc@ and tech@ lists nowadays are logic bugs. Most actual exploits for other systems in the wild, exploit logic bugs.
Your hash function drops every other bit because of some logic error and anyone can login as root in about ten attempts? Your web server code uploads any file to a user-specified path, and has permissions for everything? A race condition in your file locks?
No problem, just use Haskell. Oh, wait...
Please tell me how your safe languages will help me.
About proofs, Donald Knuth had this to say.
It's easy to make something work as designed. It's harder to design something right, especially if you think you don't need to worry about security.
Edited 2011-09-01 15:22 UTC