Joel On Apr 12, 2005 12:45 AM, Joel Kamentz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Re: bridges and stuff. > > Let's use an example someone else already brought up -- cross site scripting. > How many people > feel that, before it was ever known or had ever occurred the first time, good > programming > practices should have prevented any such vulnerability from ever happening? > I actually think > that would have been possible for the extremely skilled and extremely > paranoid. However, we're > asking people to protect against the unknown.
I would be of the opinion that good programming practices should have prevented it. And it doesn't take a 'really skilled' programmer either, it's really simple - you are writing your input into some context; so make sure your input isn't allowed to escape into another context. I.e. You are taking _text_ and displaying it as _text_. It could take on the context of _html_. You don't want this, so you escape the _html_ special characters so it always display as _text_. > I don't have experience with the formal methods, but I can see that, > supposing this were NASA, > etc., formal approaches might lead to perfect protection. However, all of > that paranoia, formality > or whatever takes a lot of time, effort and therefore huge economic impact. I don't see that. If we are just talking about the 'programming' part and not the 'desigining' part it's really pretty straight-forward to do what is required. > I guess my personal opinion is that unit testing, etc. are great shortcuts > (compared to perfect) > which help reduce flaws, but with lesser expense. You would still use these things. -- Michael
