I agree with all the criticism about the author, the intentions, and the points in the article, expressed in the ref. thread. I also think the author highlights a serious issue (if we leave "selling the book", cheap criticism, and sensationalism aside). While nothing new for most developers, the article has spawned a personal rabbit hole of discovery, starting from supply chain attacks.

I am still very early in my process of learning Rust (still reading The Book) and self-taught software engineering in general, and the journey the article has spawned was very educational to me. I've learned about securing software and being mindful across the whole SDLC[1], AppSec, DevSec, OWASP, SLSA[2] Socket[3], GitHub Advanced Security, and many more tools and guidelines. Last of which is RustSec[4]. Which quenched my thirst and closed that personal rabbit hole. It has opened a different can of worms though.

While endemic to any non-monolithic ecosystem and only part of the "big security picture", supply chain is possibly the major player across the spectrum. Comparable to "the legacy issue" of stagnating systems and infrastructures, open to exploits as old as the Sun.

Now, while I am aware that security is a process, not a product and that this is easier said than done: I wonder if tools like RustSec should be embraced at the foundational level and made a "mandatory best practice". RustSec tools integrate with an up to date security advisory database and Cargo. They can also be deployed as GitHub Actions.

Because I am sure this is not all roses: I agree that (for example) dependabot is seen as a major annoyance more than a useful tools for a number of reasons, and that RustSec could spark the same kind of thoughts. However, it could be a great stepping stone of the security process.

I am aware I may be being too idealistic here, but the process has to start from somewhere and stagnating on "dogmas" ain't helping either.

Please be kind in your replies.

Cheers

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDvz8KivY_U [2] https://slsa.dev [3] https://socket.dev [4] https://rustsec.org

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[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

From the perspective of a library author even evaluating if a given bug could be considered a vulnerability is extra effort that is not strictly useful to the project itself, just to those using it who want to not apply every single update.