Posts by Logiker72 40 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2021
Essentially, a safety-critical control unit does have an automated test system (often call HIL Simulator) which is testing each and every feature of the control unit, as specified in the requirements document. So for each piece of software there exists a mirroring piece of test case software in the HIL system.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_in_the_Loop
Each requirement is numbered and change controlled.
New requirements must be assessed. documented and tests written for the automated test.
Each new SW release must be fully tested against the automated test battery before it is tested in vehicle/test patient/aircraft.
Critical modules of software must have a sufficient battery of Module/Unit Tests to check the Module requirments. Which are also nicely written down in a system like DOORS or Polarion.
All test cases must be green before released into service with normal passengers/patients.
If you do this for IT-class software, you can have similar quality levels.
These industries manage to specify, design, test and produce rather reliable and safe machinery. Including lots of complex software such as ABS brakes and flight control computers with full authority to move control surfaces, engine valves etc.
Boeing messed up MCAS, but thousands of other control unit types (and dozens of millions of instances) nicely work in cars, airplanes, patient monitors and so on. Most of us use an ABS brake every day.
So we know almost perfect quality is possible. It is a matter of documentation, skilled engineers, sufficient and skilled testing. Sufficient project funding and time, of course. That is the good news.
Bad news is that non-safety critical development operations are managed by cheapskates and idiots in most instances.
Some further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_26262
If reports are to be believed, HAROP destroyed the Armenian tanks and even air defence guns/launchers. It won the war for the Turk(ic)s.
Armenia has ZSU23s and the more modern Truck-based radar flak weapon. Was apparently useless against heavy turkic jamming and the HAROPs which are operating like self-controlled robots.
The Israeli "IAI Harop" is not using helo rotors. Rather it is a miniature plane which comes down Stuka-/Kamikaze like in the final few seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V9mbC-Esmg
Seems DARPA is several years behind the threat.
And dont believe for a second this is not a problem because Israel is on your side. Others can recreate the Harop with moderate resources and finances.
Hetzner
OVHCloud
1&1
And quite a few more, according to https://www.websiteplanet.com/fr/web-hosting/
I used Hetzner and OVHCloud. Both worked very nicely and reliably.
And yes, always have a suitable backup strategy. Data centers do burn down then and now. You need at least three copies of each important record/file. Each copy in a different location or preferrably, a different service provider.
They will always be able to purchase a few thousand high end CAE workstations by unofficial means.
But they have a hard time flooding the planet with hundreds of millions of Wintel laptops while Uncle embargoes them.
So they look for one more replacement, after the Loongson thing.
Hi Mars, you still try to find patterns in the randomness of half baked software ?
Why dont you try to find patterns in nature. Much more complex and interesting.
I always find it extremely refreshing to walk in the forest for some hours.
Cotswolds for you ?
BTC is stored on ordinary computers. Said computers* have cyber weaknesses. FBI and the rest of gov own stashes of exploits. So they used an exploit to read the contents of the bad guy computer. As part of this operation, they got the wallet key and all other keymat, such as passphrase and account pw.
*yeah,even Linux and xBSD
The interpreter can simply count instructions executed and the amount of octets allocated. File access primitives can limit the scope of files to be accessed. It will absolutel HALT after the max number of instructions executed.
No need for OS-level sandboxing. It would not hurt as an additional measure, though.
Several people/orgs (including Microsoft) have made a statistical analysis of the CVE database and found that about 70% of exploitable bugs would not happen in a memory safe language. Mozilla invented Rust for the same reason.
You are free to do the same.
Finally, your attempt at godwinning the discussion is not ingenious.
References:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-security-bugs-are-memory-safety-issues/
https://www.techspot.com/news/85368-google-70-percent-serious-security-bugs-memory-safety.html
https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/18/we-need-a-safer-systems-programming-language/
Even if you (say) create a turing complete scripting engine, you can still prove mathematically that ANY script will
A) consume only as many instructions it is allotted
B) consumes only as much memory as allotted
C) accesses only a small subset of files
Even if that script comes from a fully hostile adversary.
As the C fans will claim that all OS kernels must use C, here is a small list to prove otherwise:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICL_2900_Series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_(operating_system)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Multi-Programming_Executive
+ formally defined data formats (e.g. EBNF, Regex)
+ strict scanners+parsers instead of "error tolerance"
+ integer types which generate exceptions on under- and over-flows
+ sandboxing apps. Why does Word (and the word virus you just contracted) have access to you engineering files ? AppArmor, Sandboxie, Apples sandbox, Linux security modules, ...
+ K.I.S.S. principle. The less features your SW has, the less bugs it will prolly have
+ fomally verified, minimalist OS kernels such as seL4. A bug in the tcp stack corrupts only the TCP subsystem and does not result in a takeover.
70% or more of the exploitable CVE bugs are related to the "undefined behaviour" which comes from the C and C++ languages. A simple index error in the kernel will often yield total control to an attacker. We had "ping of death" and "gethostbyname() kernel takeover".
Face it, all human programmers make mistakes, because they are tired, sick from the flu, had a squabble with the wife. etc. There will always be these 70% of bugs if we continue to use C and C++.
Mathematical proof is too expensive/unheard of for most application fields, so we can rationally exclude that option.
Rust, Swift, Java, C#, Vala and some others are the way to go.
Strong typing both at compile and runtime and we can eliminate 70% of bugs !
Here is Tony Hoare saying the same thing: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billion-Dollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare/
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