September 16, 2024 at 04:17PM
The Safe C++ Extensions proposal, driven by the C++ community, aims to enhance the language’s memory safety. Notably, it addresses concerns raised by industry leaders and organizations about the prevalence of memory safety flaws in C++. By providing memory safety features, this initiative strives to make writing secure code more accessible and cost-effective for developers.
The meeting notes highlighted the urgency for improving memory safety in the C++ programming language. The C++ community has published the Safe C++ Extensions proposal to address memory safety bugs and provide safer code. There is a growing demand for safer languages like Rust due to the prevalence of memory safety flaws in C and C++.
The proposal aims to address criticism from industry experts and public sector organizations, as well as the need to respond to calls for memory safety from authoritative entities like the NSA and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA).
The proponents of the Safe C++ project aim to provide memory safety features similar to Rust, while allowing existing code to remain functional. This initiative will require industry participation to specify memory-safe versions of C++ features and realize the project’s goals in reducing C++ security vulnerabilities.