From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-15 09:32:42 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!cyclone.bc.net!news.uunet.ca!nf3.bellglobal.com!nf1.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: No call for Ada References: <107m6cdmda7f639@corp.supernews.com> <407D235B.2040004@noplace.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 12:17:32 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.223.163 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sympatico.ca X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 1082045849 198.96.223.163 (Thu, 15 Apr 2004 12:17:29 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 12:17:29 EDT Organization: Bell Sympatico Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:7146 Date: 2004-04-15T12:17:32-04:00 List-Id: Jeffrey Carter wrote: > Robert I. Eachus wrote: > >> Personally, I think that the need for web servers for companies doing >> web commerce is an area where Ada's strengths will eventually mean >> that it is needed to avoid the hazards associated with other >> languages. There is a large, nasty group of crackers out there, and if >> they ever sniff out the ability to redirect the billions of dollars in >> e-commerce transactions into their accounts, financially safe software >> will be in great demand. > > Indeed. Buffer overflows account for about half of all known > vulnerabilities. People have been "fixing" these errors for over a > decade, yet even today people are creating new buffer-overflow > vulnerabilities, so it appears that something stronger than knowing > about the problem is needed to avoid them. Something like a language > that doesn't allow them in the first place. Yet none of the discussions > of how to improve security mention the effects of appropriate language > choice. That is why I have said in the past that someone needs to rewrite BIND (DNS) in Ada. I would sleep better at night with an Ada version of it exposed to the net than the C versions we use. > When big customers refuse to use networking SW written in a language > that allows buffer overflows, Ada, and products like AWS, will be there > to fill the need. But the customers need to know that language choice > can make a big difference. Absolutely. -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://ve3wwg.tk