Writing Secure Code

Appendix A. Dangerous APIs

Many people tout certain APIs as dangerous. Although it is true that some function calls can have insecure ramifications if used incorrectly, we have learned that simply banning, outlawing, or discouraging the use of certain functions is helpful but not sufficient to produce more secure code. Rather, it creates a false sense of security. As in the off-by-one example in Chapter 5, even the safer functions can cause exploitable problems when used incorrectly. However, a number of software projects have obtained measurable gains in security by banning functions that are difficult to use safely.

Dave Cutler, Microsoft’s chief architect of Microsoft Windows NT, once told me there are no such things as dangerous functions, ...