SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the hubble,-bubble,-bits-cause-trouble dept.
Adrian Colyer presents a whitepaper by Wressnegger et al. on bugs caused by 32 to 64 bit transition. The paper deals specifically with going from the ILP32 data model used by Win32 and Linux, to the LLP64 (Win64) and LP64 (Linux) data models.
They did also find genuine vulnerabilities among those issues, in every single area the theory predicted they might exist. These include vulnerabilities in high profile projects such as Google's Chromium, the GNU C Library, the Linux Kernel, and the Boost C++ Libraries. The paper contains case studies in each of these areas.
Lots of people have studied integer-based flaws, but this is the first work to consider those introduced solely from the migration to 64-bit. Another thing to add to the ever-growing worry list!
I think if somebody is being careless this might sound unintuitive. Also it's always nice to see real life results that corroborate theory.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 21 2016, @04:41PM
Twice the Bits, Twice the Trouble?
Shouldn't it be Twice the Bits, 2 ^ 32 times the trouble? Or about 4 billion times the trouble?
Doesn't each additional bit double the trouble, just as each bit doubles the address space?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @07:11PM
Indeed, this means that getting twice the trouble out of twice the bits is a GREAT DEAL!