Is it secure to use malloc?

Question

Somebody told me that allocating with malloc is not secure anymore, I\'m not a C/C++ guru but I\'ve made some stuff with malloc and C/C++. Does anyone know about what risks

Answer 1

Maybe your friend is older, and isn't familiar with how things work now - I used to think C and C++ were effectively the same until I discovered many new things about the language that have come out in the last 10 years (most of my teachers were old-school Bell Laboratories guys who wrote primarily in C and had only a cursory knowledge of C++ - and Bell Laboratories engineers invented C++!). Don't laugh at him/her - you might be there someday too!

I think your friend is uncomfortable with the idea that you have to do your own memory management - ie, its easy to make mistakes. In that regard, it is insecure and he/she is correct... However, that insecure aspect can be overcome with good programming practices, like RAII and using smart pointers.

For many applications, though, having automated garbage collection is probably fine, and some programmers are confused about how pointers work, so as far as getting new, inexperienced developers to program effectively in C/C++ without some training might be difficult. Which is maybe why your friend thinks C/C++ should be avoided.