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samtheprogram 5 days ago

Would Fil-C have prevented the first or third?

pizlonator 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

By my reading, it would have prevented all of them.

DonHopkins 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

easterncalculus 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

pizlonator 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Fil-C doesn't provably prevent anything.

It does. I have lots of documentation to show exactly how and why.

> It is a hobby project by a dilettante.

Wow

spookie 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> It is a hobby project by a dilettante.

You could say the same about thousands of open source projects on which trillion dollar companies depend on. Maybe these kind souls deserve more respect, buddy.

lotharcable 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

jlokier 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

One of the use-cases of Fil-C is to prevent security issues in old C code that's much older than Fil-C itself.

hulitu 2 days ago | parent [-]

You mean i can compile an old program with Fil-C and my executable will be free of security issues ?

embedding-shape 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Probably not seeing how the code for at least the 3rd was written in 1994, some 30 years before Fil-C existed.

How is this possibly the most charitable reading of parents comment, and honestly, do you think that's what they meant? You can't read that in some other way, where maybe parent wasn't actually asking about time traveling but something else?

lotharcable 5 days ago | parent [-]

Yes it was bit uncharitable, but I couldn't resist based on the way he phrased it. It was just a joke.

"Preventing" the vulnerability would indeed require going back to 1994. Since it is a vulnerability that has existed in every display server released since then.

samtheprogram 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I meant it in the sense of continuing to run old C code like X.org in a safer way without unnecessary rewrites to memory safe languages. These vulnerabilities, like this one that's been in the wild as you say for 30 years uncaught, will continue to be found. Something like Fil-C is really useful in that context.

I also said "would it have" -- I don't really care about timeline. Obviously Fil-C is a recent development, that doesn't make the question I asked any less interesting.

sevg 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From HN guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Perhaps next time, resist the urge :)

5 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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