Re:IPv4, IPv6, and a sudden change in attitude
by ncmncm on Thursday July 23, 2020 @07:04PM
(#23933763)
This article demonstrates yet another way that Postel's Law is a terrible design principle.
The amount of damage adherence to Postel's Law has caused can never be exaggerated. It has made securing TLS extremely difficult. It makes every kind of migration or evolution difficult, and interferes with securing anything.
The way to enforce The Anti-Postel's Law is with tests that include requests and responses to be rejected, and fuzzers that explore the whole boundary of well-formed interaction. Such a test will never detect every improper toleration, but it will make equipment and programs that don't conform hardly ever work, until they are fixed.
People used to like compilers that were lax about syntax requirements and provided lots of extensions. GNU compilers obliged, for a while, and then stopped. Now, even users of Microsoft compilers have demanded Standard conformance, and have nearly got it. A compiler that won't report errors is a way to generate lock-in. That was fine with Microsoft until they understood that it was locking them in, too.
The amount of damage adherence to Postel's Law has caused can never be exaggerated. It has made securing TLS extremely difficult. It makes every kind of migration or evolution difficult, and interferes with securing anything.
The way to enforce The Anti-Postel's Law is with tests that include requests and responses to be rejected, and fuzzers that explore the whole boundary of well-formed interaction. Such a test will never detect every improper toleration, but it will make equipment and programs that don't conform hardly ever work, until they are fixed.
People used to like compilers that were lax about syntax requirements and provided lots of extensions. GNU compilers obliged, for a while, and then stopped. Now, even users of Microsoft compilers have demanded Standard conformance, and have nearly got it. A compiler that won't report errors is a way to generate lock-in. That was fine with Microsoft until they understood that it was locking them in, too.