Esthetics (or worse?) of Secure Pointers

[Robert Bernecky]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Chris Lattner wrote:

> The only practical way I can see to do this (although I don't really know
> what I'm talking about, so please remember that.  :) is to compile a whole
> program at a time with bounded pointer support.  This isn't neccesarily
> hard, except that all of the libraries that it links to also have to be
> compiled with bounded pointer support.

The crux of the problem is that it's a
Tar Baby~\cite{ http://www.savonvideo.com/tarbaby.htm} .
Consider an app, APP, that calls both XFree86 code and also calls
something else large, like tcp/ip code. In order to convert APP
to use bounded pointers, Xfree86 and tcp/ip have to be compiled
as bounded first. All their callers must then be converted at the same
time. It's right up there with budgie jumping and parrot shoot
jumping: a high level of committment is called for.

Bob

Robert Bernecky                  Snake Island Research Inc.
bernecky@acm.org                 18 Fifth Street, Ward's Island
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