Re:NSO Group iPhone Zero-Click, Zero-Day Exploit Captured in...
by tialaramex on Thursday September 07, 2023 @05:51PM
(#37426099)
And for this problem specifically Android can use WUFFS. WUFFS is a special purpose language for Wrangling Untrusted File Formats Safetly. Trading away generality (the ability to write a program which say, sends email) gets them complete safety and excellent performance.
In Rust we can't trivially write a bounds miss by mistake. But in WUFFS we just can't write a bounds miss at all. Like, that's not a thing in WUFFS, it doesn't compile. You can write your own bounds checks and show WUFFS that works, or you can write code which clearly can't have a bounds miss with no checks, that works too. But you can't just "forget" or "screw up" those won't compile.
This would be frustrating in a general purpose language. WUFFS doesn't have a "Hello, World" program because it lacks both strings and the idea of outputing to the screen. But WUFFS isn't a general purpose language, however it's the correct way to write the code that takes image files we got from some dubious source and processes them.
When Apple announced they wanted to provide proper security for vulnerable iPhone users, this is what that would look like coming from a company which actually cared about security. What you got is what it looks like from a company which prioritised marketing.
In Rust we can't trivially write a bounds miss by mistake. But in WUFFS we just can't write a bounds miss at all. Like, that's not a thing in WUFFS, it doesn't compile. You can write your own bounds checks and show WUFFS that works, or you can write code which clearly can't have a bounds miss with no checks, that works too. But you can't just "forget" or "screw up" those won't compile.
This would be frustrating in a general purpose language. WUFFS doesn't have a "Hello, World" program because it lacks both strings and the idea of outputing to the screen. But WUFFS isn't a general purpose language, however it's the correct way to write the code that takes image files we got from some dubious source and processes them.
When Apple announced they wanted to provide proper security for vulnerable iPhone users, this is what that would look like coming from a company which actually cared about security. What you got is what it looks like from a company which prioritised marketing.