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From: "John P. Linderman" <jpl.jpl@gmail.com>
To: Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: Happy birthday Morris worm
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 20:43:30 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAC0cEp9VQg3xu425oxWvOotYcOSACtoWC2Ev-0XoejKC6fzGNg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1573598358.7551.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>

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Lorinda Cherry told me that that RTM (senior) used to test people's
programs by feeding them to themselves as input, a.out < a.out. It helped
cure people of the assumption that a program would only see "reasonable"
inputs.

On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 5:40 PM Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:

> Bakul Shah:
>
>   Unfortunately strcpy & other buffer overflow friendly
>   functions are still present in the C standard (I am looking at
>   n2434.pdf, draft of Sept 25, 2019). Is C really not fixable?
>
> ====
>
> If you mean `can C be made proof against careless programmers,'
> no.  You could try but the result wouldn't be C.  And Flon's
> Dictum applies anyway, as always.
>
> It's perfectly possible to program in C without overflowing
> fixed buffers, just as it's perfectly possible to program in
> C without dereferencing a NULL or garbage pointer.  I don't
> claim to be perfect, but before the rtm worm rubbed my nose
> in such problems, I was often sloppy about them, and afterward
> I was very much aware of them and paid attention.
>
> That's all I ask: we need to pay attention.  It's not about
> tools, it's about brains and craftmanship and caring more
> about quality than about feature count or shiny surfaces
> or pushing the product out the door.
>
> Which is a good bit of what was attractive about UNIX in
> the first place--that both its ideas and its implementation
> were straightforward and comprehensible and made with some
> care.  (Never mind that it wasn't perfect either.)
>
> Too bad software in general and UNIX descendants in particular
> seem to have left all that behind.
>
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
>
> PS: if you find this depressing, cheer yourself up by watching
> the LCM video showing off UNICS on the PDP-7.  I just did, and
> it did.
>

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  reply	other threads:[~2019-11-13  1:44 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-11-12 22:39 Norman Wilson
2019-11-13  1:43 ` John P. Linderman [this message]
2019-11-21 13:10   ` William Cheswick
2019-11-21 18:04     ` Steve Johnson
2019-11-21 21:51       ` John P. Linderman
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2019-11-12 20:56 [TUHS] " Norman Wilson
2019-11-12 22:10 ` [TUHS] buffer overflow (Re: " Bakul Shah
2019-11-12 22:14   ` Larry McVoy
2019-11-12 22:41     ` Robert Clausecker
2019-11-12 22:49       ` Arthur Krewat
2019-11-12 23:45       ` Jon Steinhart
2019-11-13  0:38         ` Warren Toomey
2019-11-13  1:09         ` Arthur Krewat
2019-11-13  0:24       ` Larry McVoy
2019-11-12 22:54   ` Dave Horsfall
2019-11-12 23:22     ` Warner Losh
2019-11-12 23:27       ` Arthur Krewat
     [not found]     ` <alpine.DEB.2.20.1911191443530.10845@grey.csi.cam.ac.uk>
2019-11-21 20:02       ` Dave Horsfall
2019-11-21 20:38         ` Warner Losh
2019-11-21 21:04           ` Clem Cole
2019-11-21 22:06           ` Dave Horsfall
2019-11-21 21:48         ` Steffen Nurpmeso

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