Why would statically linking a library reduce the number of vulnerabilities in it?

AFAICT, static linking just means the set of vulnerabilities you get landed with won't change over time.

> Why would statically linking a library reduce the number of vulnerabilities in it?

I use pure go implementations only, and that implies that there's no statically linked C ABI in my binaries. That's what disabling CGO means.

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akoboldfrying 4 hours ago | parent [-]

What I mean is: There will be bugs* in that pure Go implementation, and static linking means you're baking them in forever. Why is this preferable to dynamic linking?

* It's likely that C implementations will have bugs related to dynamic memory allocation that are absent from the Go implementation, because Go is GCed while C is not. But it would be very surprising if there were no bugs at all in the Go implementation.

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tptacek 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They're prioritizing memory corruption vulnerabilities, is the point of going to extremes to ensure there's no compiled C in their binaries.

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cookiengineer 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It would be nice if there was something similar to the ebpf verifier, but for static C, so that loop mistakes, out of boundary mistakes and avoidable satisfiability problems are caught right in the compile step.

The reason I'm so avoidant to using C libraries at all cost is that the ecosystem doesn't prioritize maintenance or other forms of code quality in its distribution. If you have to go to great lengths of having e.g. header only libraries, then what's the point of using C99/C++ at all? Back when conan came out I had hopes for it, but meanwhile I gave up on the ecosystem.

Don't get me wrong, Rust is great for its use cases, too. I just chose the mutex hell as a personal preference over the wrapping hell.

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underdeserver 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You can have memory corruption in pure Go code, too.

	▲	tptacek 24 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Uh huh. That's where all the Go memory corruption vulnerabilities come from!
	▲	cookiengineer 21 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nobody claimed otherwise. You're interacting with a kernel that invented its own programming language based on macros, after all, instead of relying on a compiler for that. What could go wrong with this, right? /s