Importance of Memory Safety in Cybersecurity

‼️”THE IMPORTANCE OF MEMORY SAFETY CANNOT BE OVERSTATED.”‼️ Report Excerpt: “Memory Safe Languages (MSLs) represent a significant evolution in the approach to software security, moving beyond existing measures to proactively prevent vulnerabilities by default during development at compile time and/or during runtime. The importance of memory safety cannot be overstated: a 2019 study estimated that 66% of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) for iOS 12 and 71% of CVEs for Mojave were caused by memory safety issues. The consequences of memory safety vulnerabilities can be severe, ranging from data breaches to system crashes and operational disruptions. For example, a Google Project Zero review of exploits detected in-the-wild estimates that 75% of CVEs used in those exploits were memory safety vulnerabilities. Out of the 58 in-the-wild zero-days discovered in 2021, 67% were memory safety vulnerabilities. As a result, the adoption of MSLs is regarded as a key strategy in improving software security and reducing the risk of costly security incidents. This aligns with CISA's #SecureByDesign principles, which advocate for reducing vulnerability classes by default.” Kudos to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency & National Security Agency on their latest report: https://lnkd.in/esnjx5nM

Memory vulnerabilities remain one of the most persistent threats in modern software development. From Heartbleed to BadAlloc, we've seen how poor memory management can compromise national security, critical infrastructure, and user trust. That’s why the recent joint guidance from CISA and NSA on Memory Safe Languages (MSLs) is so timely. MSLs like Rust, Go, Java, and Swift embed safety mechanisms—such as bounds checking, ownership models, and garbage collection—directly into the language. This proactive design prevents entire classes of vulnerabilities like buffer overflows and use-after-free bugs before they occur. But how do MSLs compare to traditional memory protection techniques? ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization): Makes memory addresses unpredictable, hindering exploitation. But it can be bypassed via brute force or info leaks, and doesn’t stop all out-of-bounds writes. DEP (Data Execution Prevention) & CFG (Control Flow Guard): Prevent unauthorized code execution and hijacked control flow. Effective, but reactive—they don’t eliminate the root cause of memory bugs. Stack Canaries: Detect buffer overflows by placing sentinel values on the stack. Useful, but can be bypassed with sophisticated exploits like SEH overwrites or ROP chains. MSLs: Prevent vulnerabilities by design. They eliminate entire bug classes, reduce reliance on post-hoc mitigations, and improve reliability and developer productivity. . The takeaway? Defense-in-depth is essential, but secure-by-design is transformative. MSLs don’t just patch the cracks—they rebuild the foundation. Let’s start building software that’s secure from the first line of code.   https://lnkd.in/e5DiqfFw #CyberSecurity #MemorySafeLanguages #SecureByDesign #SSDF #CISA #NSA

BLUF: “The importance of memory safety cannot be overstated”. +1 for #Java, and the modern direction of Apple & Microsoft with programming languages and #softwaredevelopment environments. National Security Agency / Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published a June 2025 Joint Guide on reducing #vulnerabilities in modern software development through memory safe languages. This is on point! Memory related issues are a recurring unnecessary theme for software vulnerabilities (CVE) among non-Memory Safe Languages (e.g. C/C++, Assembly). Memory Safe Languages (#MSL) like: Java, .NET languages, #Swift (Apple/IOS), Go, and JavaScript “offer built-in safeguards that shift safety burdens from developers to the language and the development environment”.  I believe we’re collectively way past the point of arguing for many perceived advantages of non-MSLs like “performance” (which can greatly benefit from APIs/hardware optimization). Even the best human teams are not equipped to manually meet needs standards at scale, especially with modern multi-threaded applications. The problem set is way to subtle and it's extremely impractical for development teams to go back and correct most issues - unless explicitly called out as a #CVE. On the other hand, runtime environments like #JREs, virtual machines, or #CLR (.NET runtime) are updated regularly. MSLs should be the standard, with only specific exceptions as needed such as: low level operating system work, drivers, tooling, maintaining legacy code, or addressing very specific problem sets.     I invite feedback :-).