[racket] Example of using OpenSSL instead of mzcrypto

Neil Van Dyke wrote at 04/24/2012 03:13 PM:
> One reason for avoiding linking native code libraries is that they are 
> often written in C/C++, and this means that memory-corrupting bugs 
> often exist in them.  Memory-corrupting bugs can be a nightmare for 
> debugging, and I prefer to keep sources of them isolated in native 
> processes, separate from the native processes that are hosting Racket 
> code.

For example, mere hours later, this security advisory came through:

> Tomas Hoger, Red Hat, discovered that the fix for CVE-2012-2110 for
> the 0.9.8 series of OpenSSL was incomplete. It has been assigned the
> CVE-2012-2131 identifier.
>
> For reference, the original description of CVE-2012-2110 from DSA-2454-1
> is quoted below:
>
> CVE-2012-2110
>
> 	Tavis Ormandy, Google Security Team, discovered a vulnerability
> 	in the way DER-encoded ASN.1 data is parsed that can result in
> 	a heap overflow.
>    

With C/C++ code, sometimes even the security fixes to memory bugs have bugs.

These kinds of bugs are pretty common in C/C++ code.  Keeping as much 
C/C++ code as practical in separate processes from Racket reduces 
opportunities for C/C++ code bugs to stomp on the Racket VM and JIT.  As 
much as practical, I want to avoid having to try to debug a reported 
"bug in the Racket app" that is actually due to heap or stack corruption 
by some C/C++ library that the Racket app links through FFI.

-- 
http://www.neilvandyke.org/