Lorraine Johnson lorraine at nw.saic.com
Tue Jul 25 14:53:38 CDT 2000


>From my reading, it seems that no language can be considered fool-proof and
safe.  (If there WERE such a language, everyone would have abandoned C/C++,
Java, and Perl for CGI programs long ago.)  The point is to understand the
common mistakes for your language which can lead to security holes and
develop a checklist for catching them.  For example, in C, string variables
have declared lengths, so you need to check that the user hasn't entered
more than that number of characters - a buffer overflow.  (And you need to
remember that the end of string marker counts in the number of characters!) 

On the plus side for Perl, there's taint mode, where you are warned if you
try to use user-supplied data without validating it.  Since Perl is so
heavily used on the Internet, I would think its pitfalls are pretty well
known by now.  There are a number of resources on avoiding insecure Perl
(I've found help for my CGI work at http://advosys.ca, there's CERT,
there's http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/www-security-faq.html).  If you're
not developing for the Web, then some of that information doesn't apply,
but much of it is general.

To sum up, any language will have it's security traps.  Perl's advantages
are that: it has an automatic checking mode which HELPS you avoid them; it
is well-supported by multiple resources (print, Web, human); and its user
community will openly discuss problems and work-arounds.

Hope this is useful,


At 10:48 AM 7/25/00 -0700, Paul Farrall wrote:
>At the Perl Conference Town Meeting, someone got up and said; "Perl
>has a serious image problem, what can we do to address this?".  At the
>time, I thought wow it must suck to work at a place where the bosses
>buy into all the Perl FUD strewn about.   Foolish me........
>When I got back to work on Monday, I sent a summary of the conference
>to my department and the following reply came back from the VP of
>> Given security issues, is it a good idea to be using PERL for our
>> tools?
>Does anyone have any good advice on how to respond to this?  Keep in
>mind that this guy is my boss :-).
>Paul Farrall

J. Lorraine Johnson
SAIC/Sea Technology
lorraine at nw.saic.com
v: (425) 482-3316
f: (425) 485-5566

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