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Concept
Memory safety
Résumé
Memory safety is the state of being protected from various software bugs and security vulnerabilities when dealing with memory access, such as buffer overflows and dangling pointers. For example, Java is said to be memory-safe because its runtime error detection checks array bounds and pointer dereferences. In contrast, C and C++ allow arbitrary pointer arithmetic with pointers implemented as direct memory addresses with no provision for bounds checking, and thus are potentially memory-unsafe.
Memory errors were first considered in the context of resource management (computing) and time-sharing systems, in an effort to avoid problems such as fork bombs. Developments were mostly theoretical until the Morris worm, which exploited a buffer overflow in fingerd. The field of computer security developed quickly thereafter, escalating with multitudes of new attacks such as the return-to-libc attack and defense techniques such as the non-executable stack and address space layout randomization. Randomization prevents most buffer overflow attacks and requires the attacker to use heap spraying or other application-dependent methods to obtain addresses, although its adoption has been slow. However, deployments of the technology are typically limited to randomizing libraries and the location of the stack.
In 2019, a Microsoft security engineer reported that 70 percent of all security vulnerabilities were caused by memory safety issues. In 2020, a team at Google similarly reported that 70 percent of all "severe security bugs" in Google Chromium were caused by memory safety problems. Many other high-profile vulnerabilities and exploits in critical software have ultimately stemmed from a lack of memory safety, including Heartbleed and a long-standing privilege escalation bug in sudo. The pervasiveness and severity of vulnerabilities and exploits arising from memory safety issues have led several security researchers to describe identifying memory safety issues as "shooting fish in a barrel".
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