←back to thread

Breaking Git with a carriage return and cloning RCE

(dgl.cx)
348 points dgl | 4 comments | 08 Jul 25 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
dwrodri[dead post] ◴[08 Jul 25 18:22 UTC] No.44502622[source]▶
[flagged]
bpt3 ◴[08 Jul 25 18:26 UTC] No.44502649[source]▶
As mentioned in the article, this is a logic error that has nothing to do with C strings.
replies(1): >>44502702 #
eptcyka ◴[08 Jul 25 18:32 UTC] No.44502702[source]▶
Whilst true, there’s a swathe of modern tooling that will aide in marshalling data for IPC. Would you not agree that if protobuf, json or yaml were used, it’d be far less likely for this bug have slipped in?
replies(4): >>44502886 #>>44502968 #>>44503106 #>>44504894 #
1. alexvitkov ◴[08 Jul 25 18:53 UTC] No.44502886[source]▶
In isolation, for any one particular bug, yes, but if you start applying this logic to everything, even problems as simple as reading some bytes from a file, you end up with a heao of dependencies for the most mundane things. We've tried that, it's bad.
replies(3): >>44502921 #>>44503094 #>>44503589 #
2. gpm ◴[08 Jul 25 18:58 UTC] No.44502921[source]▶
On the contrary, we've tried it and it works great.
3. sunshowers ◴[08 Jul 25 19:15 UTC] No.44503094[source]▶
No, I think in general you should trust other people with experience in an area more than your own naive self. Division of labor and all that.

There are exceptions, as always, but using dependencies is good as a first approximation.

4. eptcyka ◴[08 Jul 25 20:08 UTC] No.44503589[source]▶
I don't believe we must apply any guideline ad absurdum. Using a battle tested marshalling/serialization library is clearly the way to go most often. Of course, one can still construct difficult to parse XML and JSON or any other blob for any given format, but the chances that bad input will result in an RCE are lower.