https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031224-00/?p=41... - there are probably just as many companies relying on old Office docs as old Windows programs at this point
Rewrites are always a bad idea. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
This isn't a startup with 10 developers - there are literally thousands of developers working on Office and all sorts of internal tooling built around the codebase.
This will keep companies like NSO in business for decades to come.
> there are literally thousands of developers working on Office and all sorts of internal tooling built around the codebase
That's no excuse for the security hacks this codebase is enabling. They need to stop adding new features for a decade, if that's what it takes, in order to fix the security issues. Think of all the ransomware attacks, identity theft, attacks on journalists, and democracy even, that the security issues in this codebase is enabling, and will continue to enable if business-as-usual is the way forward. The stakes are high, and these tech companies must be made to pay a heavy price for each security breach enabled by their negligence, and then the economics will be in favor of prioritizing security over features.
Now, that may still be better than the current situation. But glibly saying "just hire better programmers" means you're hiding your head in the sand.
So there's two categories of "taking those precautions". One is "fix security bugs", which, yes, of course take those precautions.
But the second category of "taking those precautions" is "re-write the whole thing in Rust". That's much more questionable whether it's worth it. How much time and effort will the rewrite take? What else could those people do with that much time? How bad are the security holes? How bad will it be to introduce the new bugs? What fraction of security holes will be closed by the rewrite?
flowerlad's idea seems to be that, in light of this latest attack, it's worth going to any lengths to fix every security hole. I think that idea is mistaken.
And, which software are we talking about? The network stack? Excel? Everything ever written in C/C++? The trade-offs are different for each piece of software. And if the answer is "everything", that sounds like roughly a decade of work for the entire software engineering workforce. That seems totally unrealistic, even in light of this latest attack.
Look, the attack was huge. I'm not trying to minimize it at all. But it still isn't worth the measures that flowerlad proposes.
I never say that. But maybe you just don't need to rewrite the whole project to fix some bugs? Sometime it is maybe the right answer but it should not be the default answer.