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Completely protect yourself from fatal system failure |
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How Code, Market Share Affect OS Security
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The title of the column "Security Isn't Just Avoiding Microsoft" [Opinion, May 7] is somewhat true but far from being the answer when selecting a platform for your corporation.
C variants like C++ and C# are commonly used to develop Windows and applications for Windows. Legacy programming languages such as Cobol, however, provide strict enforcement of data field formats, movement and data-typing in results. An alphanumeric move from one field to another would always truncate or space-fill, respectively, the receiving field if it was a different length. Other “quirks” were also defined by the language, which defined the results of operations, or at least specified that the results may be undefined. The languages and tools commonly used to develop Windows and Web applications do not incorporate many of the features provided by mainframe languages. When combined with the possibility of overlooking the edit/validate data entry step, it is no wonder applications worked fine with correct data but failed when used with invalid or improper data.
While optional libraries have been produced that add many of the legacy languages’ data movement and data-typing features and thereby reduce some of the buffer overflows and similar vulnerabilities, when combined with additional programmed validation coding, a problem still exists in the Windows environment: It is designed to function like a C++ program that implements “operator overloading.” Difficult enough to design and implement in a single application, it’s impossible to control in an execution environment where there is a mix of languages, compilers, programs, scripts, functions and DLLs developed by third parties. Though your application might use the new libraries and coding to protect itself from stack overflows, what of the other programs/scripts/functions/DLLs? The Registry may control the dynamic invoking of “type to function/application/program/DLL/etc.,” and any application could replace another DLL or function. What guarantee is there that any other application, without those protections, hasn’t preempted the defaults you developed with?
I find it amazing that there are so few application or security problems with Windows.
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