It's not just the Rust community. I don't especially like Rust, but I fully buy into the argument that code written in memory-unsafe languages is materially less safe than code that is. There are plenty of memory-safe options, and rewriting software to be memory safe --- especially when there's a clear, simple common case to seize on --- is a positive step for Internet safety.

I totally get that, but my stance on the matter is that some of the software we're talking about is just as memory safe as a new Rust rewrite because it doesn't do anything unsafe, but the rewrite could introduce other bugs and differences that could break things.

I would say I don't stand on the side of "rewrite nothing", but I'm more of a realist here, in that we absolutely cannot "rewrite everything" perfectly in a memory safe language, and we should first determine if a particular tool should be rewritten in a memory safe language by doing some analysis and testing on that tool.

Certainly, even though I know no Rust and am not an expert in memory safety, I would say that in the future we should try not to write totally new software in memory unsafe languages, but I'm not everyone so I can't make that rule and ensure it sticks.

Your stance, that audited C code is "just as memory safe" as new Rust, is wildly outside of the mainstream of software security. You're entitled to your opinions, but you're unlikely to find many qualified people to dive into a debate as unproductive as that. Plenty of carefully audited C code has later been found to have terrible flaws, and likely will again in the future.

Well then I guess "mainstream of software security" needs to do a better marketing job to explain to dumb programmers like me why I should be using memory safe programming languages!

Seriously, I would love to see a succinct explanation for the "rewrite everything" philosophy, but it seems religiously dogmatic to me so far and has done the opposite of convince me to use Rust (or another memory-safe language).

On the other hand, the "statically typed language" community has done a great job of convincing me that I should be using statically typed programming languages by showing many examples of where typing would help me in my day to day work, and now I like using Go a lot and I avoid tons of issues I had with Python in the past.

No, they don't. Not in this case, at least. They can just build better software, and it will get adopted. You're writing Go already, so I'm not sure why anyone would want to burn time in pointless debates about this stuff. Carry on! You're already doing it right.

I wanted to point you at this, which is example zero for why rewriting in "memory safe language number X" isn't always the best path: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33171028

I'm definitely not debating that using better languages is better, but what I am saying is that some tools written in C have been effectively tested in the real-world by being on billions of machines and being used millions of times per day. I am not totally sure, but I think if there were major issues with the current NTP implementations we would probably have found them by now? Maybe not! But, in any case, rewrites need to be more carefully considered, planned, and executed than just some people I don't know writing a new NTP in Rust and stating it's fine to use for 80% of cases.

Thanks for having a nice discussion with me, I think I am a bit more convinced that we need to rewrite some stuff, but perhaps also more convinced that we need to do a better job of picking what to rewrite and why!

Yes, I understand the point you're making that sufficiently audited C code is as safe as Rust. No, it isn't. Where that sufficiently-audited C code is feasible to replace, it will all be replaced. Browsers may take a decade or two, but C/C++-language NTP servers had better head for the bunkers and hope for some global cataclysm to halt all progress in the industry.

> the point you're making that sufficiently audited C code is as safe as Rust

The point I am actually trying to make is that memory safety is not the only consideration for security and safety. If you make a memory safe NTP and there turns out to be bad logic inside that code that does something allowing a security hole, then that's just as bad, if not worse, than using the decades-old software that did not have that bad logic, because that software has been tested in the real world day in day out for DECADES.

I trust (somewhat) that Rust isn't going to allow unsafe memory access. I don't trust that Rust programmers can write code with no bugs that's better than a tool that has been refined over generations of programmers. Memory safe programming is a tech solution to a human problem (human imperfection).

Again, new projects should be written in a memory safe language, but that's a whole other topic, IMO.

The claim isn't that memory-safe languages foreclose on all security vulnerabilities; only the worst of them. As someone who has at various times had the job of carefully reviewing large C codebases for vulnerabilities, I'll attest: whatever the rest of the vulnerabilities may be, you spend most of your time trying (and failing) to hunt down all the memory corruption problems. Your confidence in the decades of review C programs have had, in all but a very few cases, is probably misplaced.

I’m not even saying reviews, I’m saying that code has been tested in “the arena” and been proven billions of times.

I used to work in incoming quality inspection, I know human reviews are at best 85 percent accurate. I’m arguing that decades of hammering on those old as hell programs have done the reviews for you.

I've spent most of my career, which started around 1995, as a security researcher. I think you'd be surprised by how poor a job "the arena" does at sussing out complicated memory lifecycle problems in C and C++ code. Some of the patterns we now look for to find exploitable conditions aren't even all that old; much of that "arena time" was spent not even looking for those problems. Security teams at places like Google subject C/C++ code to fuzzing at boggling scales, and people still find memory safety vulnerabilities. Shit's hard. It's better just not to have this problem in the first place.

I'm not stamping my feet demanding you track down a Rust web browser. But the thread started with someone asking what the point of a Rust NTP daemon was. I think that's been amply answered now.

Ah and here it is. You're just very, very blatantly taking your biases from writing C and applying them to Rust. Do you just... Not believe every single blog post where people say "it was a bit harder to write, but it basically does what you want once you get it to compile"?

Are you just ignoring the NVME kernel driver dev who said literally the same thing about a quick naive implementation that is nearly as performant without optimization as the one that has been in tree and tuned for years?

This insistence on naysaying and defending a categorically indefensible language is baffling to me. How many major companies and products have to move to Rust and adopt it? Do y'all really convince yourselves that everyone is just in some hype train? Is this what it's like to not being able to inspect a technology and disambiguate hype from something real?

Incidentally, I just happened across the thread you linked to (I didn't bother to follow the link before; it just isn't germane to the point I'm here to make).

Importing drama from a random thread into a Show HN is pretty rude, and you shouldn't do it again.

Not to me! I'm happy with the discussion here, and will participate as long as you keep providing opportunities to point out (read: preen about) other problems with memory-unsafe software.

But it's super rude to the person who submitted their code to "Show HN". The rules on "Show HN" aren't the same as the rules for the rest of the site, because people are vulnerable when you're sharing new work. This particular person wasn't submitting their "rm with trash" program as part of an argument against memory-unsafe software. For all we know, they just like Rust, which is a legitimate reason to write in Rust. Further, approximately nobody in the industry is worried about whether "rm" is implemented in C or Rust. Your dig had nothing to do with "rmt" and everything to do with wanting to score points on this thread.

You might consider apologizing to the "rmt" person.

I have considered it and chosen not to apologize, but I’ll delete my comment because it was just scoring points in my view, I felt really smug there. However, that example is still a good one for what I’m trying to say here. Rewrites are way harder than people think.

Fair enough! I didn't realize you were in the deletion window, or I'd have written a less† sanctimonious comment.

† slightly

I deserved that so no worries.

The irony of you calling others dogmatic in this conversation is a cue for me to stop reading it, I guess.

What you're doing is just FUD bordering on some kind of weird concern trolling.

Gonna blow your mind when I tell you every single coreutil on my system is built with Rust and moreover nearly every program on my system was BUILT with that Rust-built coreutils.

Amazingly emulating some existing program behavior in Rust is easier than writing safe C! Who would've guessed? (besides eeveyone else watching and betting on Rust for the past 8 years)

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33179880

>How do you know they are unsafe? Have they been audited and memory un-safety been found?

Security vulnerabilities caused by memory safety errors can be an indication.

The number of CVEs doesn't necessarily indicate the number of errors in the code, or whether or not something is secure, since there are a lot of factors at play. A project with many CVEs could be a good sign since it means people are actively looking for and reporting issues for example. Alternatively a project with few CVEs might have a ton of hidden bugs.

It's not a perfect measure for sure, but it can at least prove that there are real world memory safety bugs that can have disastrous effects if left unfixed.

https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=ntpd https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=chrony

For those that did not click on the link, that lists 11 CVEs for chrony and 68 for ntpd

FWIW, from those 11 chrony CVEs:

- 8 were found within the project itself (mostly by me)

- none are memory-safety issues in the NTP-specific code

- the last memory-safety issue is from 2015 and it was in the custom management protocol (exploitable only by authenticated users), which was since then greatly simplified and made stateless

The project now has an excellent fuzzing coverage, it was audited, and I'm quite confident there are no remotely reachable memory-safety issues. I'll buy you a drink if you find one :).

NTP as a network protocol is extremely simple. There is no complex data, almost everything has a constant length. A minimal server+client implementation can be written in a few hundred lines of code. I wrote one in Rust, but the reason was server performance, not security.

Most of the complexity related to NTP is on the client side, in the processing of measurements provided by NTP. I don't think the language matters much here. However, if major operating systems will start switching to services written in Rust, I don't see a reason why chrony couldn't be rewritten in Rust, first the small parts related to networking and later everything.

Thanks for actually showing me some concrete examples of my wrongness instead of just attacking my character like a few others here (not my main thread here, that was a great discussion).

This is so cringe, to have this conversation constantly continue to crop up on Rust safety discussions when it's built on such an obviously falsifiable premise.

What C project is safe, exactly? You imply that the default almost is churning out safe C, so what projects with "competent" coders is producing vulnerability-less C code bases? I'll not be holding my breath because everytime, there's never an answer. My favorite person who spouts this off has multiple projects that have segfaulted from C memory programming related bugs.

Maybe, like, validate the basics of Rust functionality instead of constantly just casting doubt and aspersions on something while offering really weak defenses of what you justhl happen to be conditioned to.

I'm just trying to understand why I would want to use Rust. You Rust people constantly act like dickheads anytime anyone asks questions like I did. If you all are so goddamn sure that it's the best way, then how about not acting like a total asshole to me and point me to some things I can read that will convert me?

You folks are the reason no one likes Rust people and Rust adoption is lower than it should be; try being human for once.

With all due respect, I don't know what I could possibly point you to. Rust is just a better language than C or C++. It eliminates many classes of bugs that are pervasive in those two languages. It's a true 10x advancement over mainstream languages of the past. It also has been getting plenty of traction all across the industry, from Facebook and Amazon to small startups and open source projects like the Linux kernel.