full-disclosure - Re: [FD] several issues in SQLite (+ catching up on several other bugs)

Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2015 20:42:32 -0400
From: Jeffrey Walton <noloader@...il.com>
To: Michal Zalewski <lcamtuf@...edump.cx>
Cc: "fulldisclosure@...lists.org" <fulldisclosure@...lists.org>,
	bugtraq <bugtraq@...urityfocus.com>
Subject: Re: [FD] several issues in SQLite (+ catching up on several other
	bugs)

On Sun, Apr 19, 2015 at 8:31 PM, Michal Zalewski <lcamtuf@...edump.cx> wrote:
>> Clang and its analyzers found a number of issues a couple of years
>> ago. As far as I know, the results were dismissed. See "Clang 3.3 and
>> Scan-Build results",
>
> Well, I can kinda sympathize. Somebody took one of my OSS projects
> (p0f) and ran it through a static analyzer a while ago (the analyzer
> shall remain nameless, but was one of the major ones). The results
> were just pages and pages of nonsensical findings, interspersed with
> non-specific style recommendations.

I've felt the pain myself. So I'm definitely in the sympathize camp.

> An experience like that can quickly divide developers into two camps:
> the "not sure, but let me spend a week to address everything, just in
> case" one, and the "show me faulting test cases or get lost" bunch.

Yeah, its a trade off.

We know developers are smarter than the analyzers. But rather than
developers working with the analyzers - like initializing a variable
even if it does not need to be done (and letting the optimizer do its
job) - they just dismiss all the results. They dismiss both the valid
ones and the noise. Its a very disingenuous strategy.

Its no wonder software has so many problems with security. Until
developers abandon the l33t, 1970's K&R way of doing things,
improvement will continue to move at a snail's pace.

> I've heard it summed up this way: when a particular check is stable
> and reliable enough to be actually useful to most developers, it stops
> being called "static analysis" and becomes a "standard compiler
> warning" =)

Haha, yes.

Be careful with Clang and the dynamic analyzers. They *don't* produce
false positives because they operate on real data.

Jeff

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