Author here: No, symbolic verification does not protect from buffer overflows. Writing the implementation in Rust does
We are investigating ways how to do more formal verification for the implementation itself.
We are investigating ways how to do more formal verification for the implementation itself.
sigh, not true.
https://tgrez.github.io/posts/2022-06-19-buffer-overflow-in-... https://shnatsel.medium.com/how-rusts-standard-library-was-v... "This is a buffer overflow bug in the standard library’s implementation of a double-ended queue." "Rust will panic if you attempt to write out of bounds."
Writing the implementation will increase memory safety but only if the implementation adheres strictly to safe Rust - which means even avoiding ANY packages that use unsafe features. The fact Rust can pull in any package that has an unsafe {} block means you're not promised to be safe.
The equivalent could be said about writing the implementation in JavaScript, Python, etc... (that they protect against buffer overflows)
>It does help make it much less likely.
Yeah... To the same extent as the infamous proof of formal correctness of an example program published in a book, until the program was tested negatively by a student some months later.
It is true though that the underlying unsafe rust in std, or crates or whatnot can have errors though and sometimes we just kind of pretend it's not there since we don't see it.
>The equivalent could be said about writing the implementation in JavaScript, Python, etc... (that they protect against buffer overflows)
This is why we should be encouraging people to write in memory safe languages in general and not just rust or whatever. The overwhelming majority of software does not need to be some super optimized native-code SIMD+AVX1024 beast and would run on something like .net or the JVM, and even Python with no issues. It makes me cringe every time I see some random utils written in C that would work fine in Python.
I don't believe writing the implementation in Rust does that: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/09/21/Security-advisory-for-...
It's not pedantic to differentiate between mitigating a thing and preventing a thing.