Programmer Musings

Review of Secure Coding in C and C++

Secure Coding in C and C++
Robert C. Seacord
Addison-Wesley, 2006

One very real problem in software today is the rise in security exploits of one kind or another. Gone are the days when we can just assume that no user of our software will try to break it, or use the software to compromise an entire system. The more immediate problem is that most of us have no training in preventing security vulnerabilities in our code.

This book does a fairly good job of covering a number of sources of security problems and explaining how they can be exploited. Using this information and the recommended practices in the book, you can make your code much more secure. The book has a chapter devoted to each of several vulnerabilities. The author examines the reason for the problem, how it is likely to manifest, and the kinds of exploits that can be applied. He then makes suggestions for tools and techniques to use to reduce these problems.

The book covers topics such as strings, integers, dynamic memory, and formatted I/O, as well as others. In each case, the book carefully explains where the potential problems lie. In some cases, the author shows actual examples from code that was in live use. Although the delivery can be a bit dry at times, the material itself is sometimes scary in its implications.

Possibly the most important chapter in the book is the final one Recommended Practices. This chapter covers more than just techniques for solving a particular kind of pointer bug. This is the chapter that covers overall strategies, such as threat modeling, data sanitization, and defense in depth. If you have any background in computer security, these concepts will probably be familiar. If not, they are the most important things for you to learn from the entire book.

This book should be a requirement for anyone who develops software that will be used by more than just his co-workers. This includes software available over the web.