Re:DARPA's “Unhackable” Computer
by abecedarius on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @04:24PM
(#16011130)
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/cheri... sounds promising.
Re:DARPA's “Unhackable” Computer
by deepnotderp on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @04:56PM
(#16011295)
Unfortunately, given the industry reliance upon standard C, I doubt capability machines will ever catch on.
Re:DARPA's “Unhackable” Computer
by nickpsecurity on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @05:18PM
(#16011409)
CHERI a capability machine designed for C programs that runs FreeBSD.
Re:DARPA's “Unhackable” Computer
by deepnotderp on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @06:12PM
(#16011653)
My point is more that it requires modifications to existing C code to use the full capabilities (no pun intended) of a capability machine.
I wonder if this could be done with an alternate stdlib. Editing the usual e.g. heap management functions et al. so it does stuff behind the scenes.
Why not get safety AND easy concurrency by going to Software Transactional Memory in hardware? I don't know the specifics of the overhead off the top of my head but I imagine we're getting close to the point where it's a reasonable cost to bear for the benefits it would bring...
Frankly, if it were about memory safety, though, I think we could count C out. A microarchitecture with inherent protection against memory bugs would likely not be able to provide it's advantages to vanilla C or existing C software.