Unsecured API functions

[Tom Spear]

On 5/3/07, Robert Shearman <rob at codeweavers.com> wrote:
> Tom Spear wrote:
> > I was writing up a Hello World with input program for a demonstration
> > for a non-developer coworker last week, and used the unsecured getch()
> > and got the standard warning about how it was unsecured and dangerous
> > to use that.  That prompted me to look up the basic secured functions
> > on the MS website, and compare to wine code.  According to MSDN,
> > things like gets have been replaced with gets_s.  However, as far as I
> > can tell, wine still only implements gets for Windows programs to
> > use..  Do we implement secured versions of other functions, and if
> > not, how come?
>
> Q: Why doesn't Wine implement X?
> A: Because not many programs use it and no-one has felt interested in
> implementing it for fun.

So in other words, most programs use insecure functions (like gets)
instead of using secure functions (like gets_s), leaving themselves
vulnerable to all sorts of buffer overflows?  I wonder if microsoft
doesn't silently convert gets calls to gets_s calls, then, and maybe
didn't document that?

Otherwise I assume there would be thousands of buffer overflows that
(malicious) people would exploit.

I understand that most programs dont use either of those functions,
but there are others that are used by nearly every program that ms
deprecated in favor of secure versions.

-- 
Thanks

Tom

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