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The assumption that JS is more secure than C.


Given that it doesn't allow for pointers pointing into places they should not, null terminated strings without terminator, arrays that decay into pointers, double free(), buffer overflows, stack corruption, ...

I would say, yes it is more secure.


Interesting, maybe we should port OpenSSL to Javascript...


I just meant JavaScript is more secure than C, not that everything should be re-written on it.

As for OpenSSL, better ask advice to Apple developers. They know all about how C helps security experts keep their jobs.


Hm, and what is the runtime written in?


There are only two big opensource JS engines (Mozilla's whatever-monkey-it-is-now and Google's V8).

This means that a lot more eyeball-power went into inspecting those for security issues than into inspecting a messenger - simple reason: a bug in V8/xMonkey would fetch far, far bigger reps and money than finding a bug in Pidgin.

Always remember: given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.


C is just one among many languages that can be used to write runtimes on. There are other safer ones, that people tend to ignore but are almost as old as C.




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