you get it but the opinion of "C and C++ are fine for SSL, the OpenSSL guys just screwed up" is plain wrong.
This is a question of priorities. We have speed and security. If you chose C/C++ (non-existent automated checking of memory access) you are chosing speed first, security second.
If security is critical then you need to chose a language that makes array out of bounds access well nigh impossible. This is an easy problem -- we have languages that will give this to us.
What percentage of exploits in the wild come from array (and pointer) access out of bounds? I'd venture to say it is above 50%.
Rather than have programmers everywhere "try hard to be careful" writing this code, let them use a safer language and have a few really smart folk work on optimizing the compiler for said language to make the safety checks faster (e.g. removing provably unnecessary/redundant checks).
People think that chosing C/C++ has a better business case (i.e. better performance / scaling) because "being really careful" works most of the time. The problem is when heartbleed (or the next array out of bounds access bug) hits the the business case's ROI no longer looks so much better than the safer path.
A better language won't eliminate all security holes but it can eliminate a huge class of them and allow engineers to focus the energy they used to spend on "being really careful about array access and pointers" on other tasks (be they security, performance or feature related).
EDIT: stating the obvious .. there are good uses for C style languages but writing large bodies of software that needs to be resistant to malicious user attacks is not one of them.
This is a question of priorities. We have speed and security. If you chose C/C++ (non-existent automated checking of memory access) you are chosing speed first, security second.
If security is critical then you need to chose a language that makes array out of bounds access well nigh impossible. This is an easy problem -- we have languages that will give this to us.
What percentage of exploits in the wild come from array (and pointer) access out of bounds? I'd venture to say it is above 50%.
Rather than have programmers everywhere "try hard to be careful" writing this code, let them use a safer language and have a few really smart folk work on optimizing the compiler for said language to make the safety checks faster (e.g. removing provably unnecessary/redundant checks).
People think that chosing C/C++ has a better business case (i.e. better performance / scaling) because "being really careful" works most of the time. The problem is when heartbleed (or the next array out of bounds access bug) hits the the business case's ROI no longer looks so much better than the safer path.
A better language won't eliminate all security holes but it can eliminate a huge class of them and allow engineers to focus the energy they used to spend on "being really careful about array access and pointers" on other tasks (be they security, performance or feature related).
EDIT: stating the obvious .. there are good uses for C style languages but writing large bodies of software that needs to be resistant to malicious user attacks is not one of them.