On: DARPA's “Unhackable” Computer

[jchw]

Unclear what the article is really talking about. However, regardless of programming language, I do think that microarchitectures could do more for security. When going for memory safety, why stop at the highest level?

Frankly, if it were about memory safety, though, I think we could count C out. A microarchitecture with inherent protection against memory bugs would likely not be able to provide it's advantages to vanilla C or existing C software.

[abecedarius → jchw]

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/cheri... sounds promising.

[deepnotderp → abecedarius]

Unfortunately, given the industry reliance upon standard C, I doubt capability machines will ever catch on.

[nickpsecurity → deepnotderp]

CHERI a capability machine designed for C programs that runs FreeBSD.

[deepnotderp → nickpsecurity]

My point is more that it requires modifications to existing C code to use the full capabilities (no pun intended) of a capability machine.

[fao_ → deepnotderp]

I wonder if this could be done with an alternate stdlib. Editing the usual e.g. heap management functions et al. so it does stuff behind the scenes.

[otakucode → jchw]

Why not get safety AND easy concurrency by going to Software Transactional Memory in hardware? I don't know the specifics of the overhead off the top of my head but I imagine we're getting close to the point where it's a reasonable cost to bear for the benefits it would bring...