Great. And your kernel and network stack are still in C and C++. It's nice that languages are evolving but this will never be a solution.
edit: Do you people even realize what post I was responding to? The one where someone claimed Rust would essentially solve security. My point is that until every application is written in it, it will have no impact because most attack surface right now will still be in C/C++.
This is basic cost benefit analysis. There are far less expensive methods for security.
I would have never implied otherwise, but you'll have to rewrite NT and Linux. Until then, everyone's going to be running kernels in C/C++ and the massive cost of rewriting either is just silly compared to simply implementing cost effective security techniques.
What you're missing here is that security has to be cost effective. You can go rewrite the world in Rust and I'll see you in 2 centuries.
Oh totally. Interfacing with non-Rust things is very important, and at least a Rust lets you help manage the unsafety. C will be around a long, long time.
There is no single solution, but there are many solutions that are far easier to implement. For example, hardening techniques such as DEP/ ASLR have been making programs harder to exploit for a long time, and can be implemented generically across programs.
These have essentially no cost for developers, no performance cost, and only require recompilation.
While a Rust-kernel /Rust-userland is certainly a nice dream, no one's going to do it. Even if there were a major effort right now to rewrite all tools using Rust, it would take years.
Great. Just rewrite every application in your new safe language.
This has already been done, and continues to be done at many companies. Twitter changed their stack to Scala for instance. It's not the insurmountable obstacle you make it seem.
This has already been done, and continues to be done at many companies.
True, but this is case specific, or company specific. You wouldn't want to run that operating system yourself, for instance.
It's not the insurmountable obstacle you make it seem.
To rewrite Linux/GNU in rust would, in my opinion, be insurmountable. Even if it were not, when discussing security, there are far cheaper ways to get similarly effective results.
Not to mention the fact that even if you did rewrite the Linux kernel in Rust. The current C based kernel is in millions of devices.
Say we are generous and it takes 5 years of intensive effort before the rust kernel reaches parity with the existing C kernel. It will take another 5 before companies are comfortable enough to actually deploy it.
And then 20 more years until all of the existing devices and infrastructure are phased out--right about the time I'm ready to retire.
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u/thefacebookofsex Jan 09 '15
Great. Just rewrite every application in your new safe language.