The recent publication Back to the Building Blocks: A Path Toward Secure and Measurable Software by the White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) provides additional detail and strategic direction supporting the National Cybersecurity Strategy released in March 2023. The strategy states an intention to shift a much greater share of responsibility for cybersecurity to software vendors, service providers, and other entities that develop software applications. This latest publication provides a more specific direction by emphasizing shifting development practices more aggressively to memory-safe programming languages.
The federal government’s strategic pivot urging broader adoption of modern, or “cloud-native,” programming languages signals a new direction in software development that moves away from traditional reliance on high-level programming languages such as C and C++. This transition is not a technical adjustment but a fundamental shift towards a more secure and efficient development practice. However, this transformation introduces a complex array of challenges, especially concerning legacy systems deeply rooted in older languages.
The imperative for memory safety
Memory safety issues have long been the bane of cybersecurity, with vulnerabilities stemming from the improper management of memory access, allocation, and deallocation. These issues are not trivial; they are often at the heart of severe security breaches, affecting systems at a foundational level. The push towards memory safety through adopting modern programming languages is driven by the need to mitigate these risks, aiming to eliminate the vulnerabilities that have plagued critical systems for decades.
The recommendation to transition away from languages like C and C++, known for lacking memory safety, holds significant merit. It aligns with a broader industry trend ..
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