[Cryptography] "NSA-linked Cisco exploit poses bigger threat than previously thought"

[Dave Horsfall]

Apologies if this appears twice; I had connectivity problems.

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On Wed, 24 Aug 2016, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:

> Sadly incorporating safer standard facilities into the C library is a 
> herculean effort.  My take is that the difficulty with C is not so much 
> the language as the rather minimal runtime.  If the C library were 
> substantially richer, most programmers would use safer built-in 
> interfaces rather than write unsafe code, or roll their own "safe" code 
> badly.

As someone who has used C since about 1976, I can safely say that it was 
never designed to be secure; it is merely a high-level assembly language.

Yes, it has structure, but it's still a high-level assembly language; if 
you want a secure language then use one.  Using it otherwise is like 
putting lipstick upon a pig, viz: it's still a pig, no matter how much 
lipstick is used.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."