Memory-Safety - Quo Vadis?

BBB-Link: https://bbb.tu-dresden.de/b/mat-xin-oyh-xzn

Presentation Language: English

Software memory safety has been a concern since the introduction of the first multiprogramming systems. Programming errors due to the use of non memory-safe languages still account for up to 70% of high severity security bugs and additionally many more problems for creating dependable software.

Over the last decade, a number of different approaches to ensure memory safety have (re)surfaced. Two approaches that caught significant interest in academia as well as industry in the last decade are languages like Rust or Fil-C on the software side and hardware-based capabilities in systems like CHERI.

However, none of these approaches is an ideal solution for all use cases. Accordingly, exploring the different solutions in this design space seems to be worthwhile, especially in order to assess the benefits and drawbacks of combining different approaches on hard- and software layers.

In this talk, we present an overview of this design space based on currently available technologies. Based on a a historical background, we discuss tradeoffs and benefits especially for combining different approaches and give a short overview of our vision for a future memory-safe system design.