Two Words: Code Quality

Dr. Brian Chess, Chief Scientist at Fortify and static analysis guru, has a couple very interesting posts on the company blog: one on the U.S. court system paying attention to source code quality of breathalyzers, and one on the quality of source code in closed systems (Nintendo Wii and Apple's iPhone).

It appears that a custom crafted Zelda saved game file can exploit a buffer overflow in Zelda allowing the execution of any code you want to throw at the console-- step one of software piracy on the Wii. It just further illustrates that you should NEVER trust user input-- no matter how unlikely you think the input will be untrustworthy (ahem, saved games in a closed video game system).

About 1.5 Million iPhones are unaccounted for, suggesting they've been hijacked to be set free of AT&T contracts. And this further illustrates that controlling a system at a distance is impossible.

Dr. Chess' comments about the Breathalyzers are choice as well:

"One of the teams used Fortify to analyze the code, and lo-and-behold, they found a buffer overflow vulnerability! This raises the possibility that if you mix just the right cocktail at just the right time, you could craft an exploit. (Dream on.) The real lesson here is that our legal system is waking up to the importance of code. If the code isn’t trustworthy, the outcome isn’t trustworthy either. (Electronic voting machine vendors, you might want to read that last line again.)"