New Hack Technique Exploits Common Programming Error

[HardOCP News]

Researchers say they have discovered a reliable method of exploiting a common programming error which has long been considered a quality issue, no a security issue.

Jonathan Afek and Adi Sharabani of Watchfire stumbled upon the method for remotely exploiting dangling pointers by chance while they were running the company's AppScan software against a Web server. The server crashed in the middle of the scan and after some investigation, the pair found that a dangling pointer had been the culprit.

 

[Eickst]

Damn lazy ass programmers. Everyone should be required to learn assembly programming on a 4mhz 8 bit micro controller before they can write computer apps.

 

[Cyrilix]

I, for one, would be quite interested in the technical details of this exploit.

 

[Cyrilix]

Damn lazy ass programmers. Everyone should be required to learn assembly programming on a 4mhz 8 bit micro controller before they can write computer apps.

That doesn't mean people won't make mistakes. You seem to imply that learning assembly beforehand is important, but I disagree. If you have a good grasp of C++, you will be OK.

 

[Steppo]

Damn lazy ass programmers. Everyone should be required to learn assembly programming on a 4mhz 8 bit micro controller before they can write computer apps.

NOW GET OFFA MY LAWN!

 

[srangara]

That doesn't mean people won't make mistakes. You seem to imply that learning assembly beforehand is important, but I disagree. If you have a good grasp of C++, you will be OK.

Dangling pointers are an especially scary problem for C++ programmers, Ptacek said.

We'd be much better off with a programming language that didn't rely on pointers for performance.