Source URL: https://herbsutter.com/2025/03/30/crate-training-tiamat-un-calling-cthulhutaming-the-ub-monsters-in-c/
Source: Hacker News
Title: Taming the UB Monsters in C++
Feedly Summary: Comments
AI Summary and Description: Yes
**Summary:**
The provided text discusses significant ongoing improvements in the C++ programming language pertaining to software security and undefined behavior (UB). It highlights efforts to enhance C++ by addressing critical vulnerabilities that can lead to security threats, such as remote code execution. These enhancements include proposals for hardening the C++ language through the upcoming C++26 standard while emphasizing that existing C++ code can benefit from safety improvements with minimal changes. This is crucial for software developers and security professionals who rely on C++ for system-level programming.
**Detailed Description:**
The text provides a comprehensive overview of the advancements in the C++ language that aim to improve safety and security, particularly concerning undefined behavior (UB):
– **Status Update on C++ Improvements:**
– The C++ community is actively working on hardening and securing C++ software.
– This includes language enhancements and standard library modifications to mitigate UB, which is a significant cause of memory safety and security vulnerabilities.
– **C++26 Developments:**
– Several key changes have been proposed in the C++26 draft standard:
– **Removal of Undefined Behavior**: Uninitialized local variables will no longer lead to UB.
– **Hardened Standard Library**: The C++ standard library will provide bounds safety guarantees for common operations on widely used types such as strings and vectors.
– **Contracts for Functional Safety**: New language contracts will help reduce bugs in C++ programming.
– **Addressing Common Vulnerabilities:**
– The focus is on common high-value cases such as uninitialized variables, pointer misuse, and out-of-bounds access.
– The ongoing work aims to systematically catalog and address UB while improving the safety of existing C++ software without requiring extensive code changes.
– **Practical Implications for Developers:**
– Developers can adopt a newer C++26 compiler to benefit from these enhancements with minimal code changes. This lowers the barrier to entry for enhancing software security.
– Some of these improvements can be applied without changes to existing code, offering a straightforward upgrade path for software development.
– **Military-grade Security Profiles:**
– A proposal for “Easy-to-adopt security profiles” aims at enabling developers to secure existing C++ code against remote code execution (RCE) attacks through the implementation of specific security measures in compilers.
– **Conclusion on Language Evolution:**
– The ongoing efforts showcase a commitment to enhancing security in C++, demonstrating that despite historical challenges, significant strides can be made in reducing vulnerabilities due to UB.
– The overall objective remains to achieve parity with modern memory-safe languages by systematically addressing and mitigating security concerns.
This detailed emphasis on software security in C++ is of significant importance for developers, security experts, and organizations that rely on C++ for critical application development, as it provides a cautious pathway to mitigate risks in production software.