[TUHS] OT: LangSec (Re: A fuzzy awk.)

[Åke Nordin]

On 2024-05-20 15:54, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

> Doug wrote:
>> I commend attention to the LangSec movement, which advocates for
>> rigorously enforced separation between legal and illegal inputs.
>     https://langsec.org
>
>    ‘The Language-theoretic approach (LangSec) regards the Internet
>     insecurity epidemic as a consequence of ‘ad hoc’ programming of
>     input handling at all layers of network stacks, and in other kinds
>     of software stacks.  LangSec posits that the only path to
>     trustworthy software that takes untrusted inputs is treating all
>     valid or expected inputs as a formal language, and the respective
>     input-handling routines as a ‘recognizer’ for that language.

. . .

>    ‘LangSec helps draw the boundary between protocols and API designs
>     that can and cannot be secured and implemented securely, and charts
>     a way to building truly trustworthy protocols and systems.  A longer
>     summary of LangSec in this USENIX Security BoF hand-out, and in the
>     talks, articles, and papers below.’

Yes, it's an interesting concept. Those *n?x tools that have
lex/yacc frontends are probably closer to this than the average
hack.

It may become hard to reconcile this with the robustness principle 
(Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept)
that Jon Postel popularized. Maybe it becomes necessary, though.

-- 
Åke Nordin <ake.nordin at netia.se>, resident Net/Lunix/telecom geek.
Netia Data AB, Stockholm SWEDEN *46#7O466OI99#