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Discussion (36 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
[0] https://openai.com/index/patch-the-planet/
I did find another use-after-free bug from a couple months ago on the mailing list:
https://marc.info/?t=177581065500002&r=1&w=2
https://www.openbsd.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD#Security_record
Linux: 24 LPEs, plus many additional vulnerabilities.
OpenBSD: 1 LPE.
FreeBSD: 7 LPEs, plus many additional vulnerabilities.
Not sure what that says, though. Perhaps the models are more likely to find Linux issues because of the training.
Given the 'quality' of most code, especially under commercial pressure, it's no surprise that much more effective tools will find many more vulnerabilities. Did OpenBSDs quality approach work in this respect?
The AI security tool then, retroactively discovered that it could have been used for LPE.
Again, just my guess I could be wrong.
[0] https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/1957873d2063db11dab780...
Dismissing their claims is not being selective, it's just the right thing to do.
So I would say that any easy answer like “this would not compile” would just be a guess, because you would want to know more of the particulars in order to answer this question.
I know that this is kind of a non-answer, but if you want to write a kernel in Rust you have to figure out boundaries for where unsafe {} are. In a kernel, there are probably large chunks of unsafe {} and the Rust compiler prevents certain bugs outside unsafe {} assuming there aren’t bugs inside unsafe {} that would prevent the type checker from doing its job correctly.
This really gets to the core of what I think Rust is about, you can add compiler checked constraints to your APIs that your C and C++ code can't. It's up to you to use them effectively. Rust's ability to keep your safe code safe is a measure of the language, but also your architecture.
Yes Rust is one language that can be widely deployed in systems programming and potentially avoid classes of memory and ownership errors. No it doesn’t magically solve all the problems. Saying “Rust would fix this” in a hypothetical situation where Rust existed in 1995 or OpenBSD was rewritten from scratch, ok, well maybe. As of today only research kernels and a very small fraction of Linux systems have been written in Rust when we are talking about kernels.
People without systems and embedded programming experience need to sit down.
I shudder to think about the amount of work that it would take to convince the rust compiler that everything is all right. Most hardware interactions is “parse, don’t validate” which means you’ll be pinky-swearing to the compiler.
And for my cursory glances at the code, most structures are handled well, that it’s mostly logic bug (from bad data) instead of bad memory access (which can happen).
They've innovated again and again in the security space and aggressively bring in new security features like pf, OpenSSH, W^X enforcement, pledge(), arc4random(), ASLR, so many other things.
Unlike, say, NPM, which can't even replicate existing packaging systems like yum or apt, and has been plagued with security flaws despite being built entirely out of a memory-safe language. Quite an achievement.
sys/kern/sysv_sem.c in OpenBSD through 7.9 has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to root. This is a context switch use-after-free after tsleep in sys_semget().
Anyway... Does this mean OpenBSD is suddenly less interesting? Nope, it's still pretty much the best-understandable general-purpose OS, ready for your RiiR fork. So, still go for that! Burn a universe or two worth of tokens! For the planet!
Does this mean OpenBSD is suddenly less secure? Nah... Its practical security level was never that much higher than that of its nominal competitors, despite Theo's best attempts, the best of which were replicated elsewhere and majority of it went ignored. The first class counts as "innovations", the rest as "experiments" which, no matter what anyone thinks, is not the same as "failed innovations."
But I digress. Now, go and donate to OpenSSH (because I bet you typed ssh today, didn't you, you rascal?), publish your OxidizedBSD fork, or whatever. Just don't link to that "is OpenBSD secure?" site, because, well, gauche, dude(tte)!