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DARPA suggests turning old C code automatically into Rust – using AI, of course
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Programming
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That's a pretty good explanation. So along the same level of explanation, what are these memory problems they are talking about?
I explained a little about buffer overflows, but in essence programming is the act of making a fancy list of commands for your computer to run one after the other.
One concept in programming is an "array" or list of things, sometimes in languages like C the developer is responsible for keeping track of how many items are in a list. When that program accepts info from other programs (like a chat message, video call, website to render, etx) in the form of an array sometimes the sender can send more info than the developer expected to receive.
When that extra info is received it can actually modify the fancy list of commands in such a way that the data itself is run directly on the computer instead of what the developer originally intended.
Bad guy sends too much data, at the end of the data are secret instructions to install a new program that watches every key you type on your keyboard and send that info to the bad guy.
Many thanks.