[3474] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Medium-term real fix for buffer overruns
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Bellovin)
Wed Oct 14 22:20:16 1998
To: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
cc: gnu@toad.com, reinhold@world.std.com, decius@ninja.techwood.org,
cryptography@c2.net
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 22:08:14 -0400
From: Steve Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
In message <199810150115.SAA29160@servo.qualcomm.com>, Phil Karn writes:
> How about a more modest start: expunge the gets() function from the
> C library?
>
> Right after the Morris Worm (almost exactly 10 years ago!) I called up
> one of the Bellcore guys who was on the ANSI C library committee and asked
> if he could propose to expunge gets() from the standard. He said the
> committee rejected the idea. It would break too much code.
>
> As if code that uses gets() isn't *already* broken.
Today's offenders are strcat, strcpy, sprintf, and the like. Few programs
use gets anymore -- after all, that was the problem, so people took it
out of their code, and didn't bother to think further...
