alt Hacker NewsI don't think you need to be an absolutist or only use memory safe languages but it's very obvious that we need to do a whole lot better than we actually do. Rewriting in Rust or any other language is one way to do that, but not a perfect one. I'll accept C++ when most C++ software has 1 in 50 chance of an RCE and not just a 1 in 50 chance of a known RCE. I think we can get there but we are not currently there.
Coreutils has a good track record. Ffmpeg doesn't. They should have rewritten ffmpeg in Rust, not coreutils.
There are other approaches though like formal verification.
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ffmpeg is actually asm and for a good reason - it has to go fucking fast or else media playback will take too much resources
>They should have rewritten ffmpeg in Rust, not coreutils.
Wait for an AI company to promote their new model by porting the entire ffmpeg to Rust (half ironically).
If you go by this metric (has a RCE and not known to have RCE), I'm pretty sure the actual statistics are more like 1 in 2, at least. And probably more than one RCE.