Re: [Passwordsafe-devel] Concerns with use of security enhanced string functions

[Steffen R. <ste...@hp...>]

Hi,

Rony Shapiro wrote:
> Using the _s versions of library functions seems to me a Good Thing, [...]
> 
> Therefore, I think they should be used where possible. It would be nice to
> have some wrappers around them, though, to eliminate the #ifdefs sprinkled
> throughout the code...
> 

agreed, I think I can implement this soon. For now, I took the easy way 
and corrected the #ifdefs only.
Would PWSUtil be a suitable place for these wrappers?

Thanks for your comments,

Steffen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pas...@li...
> [mailto:pas...@li...] On Behalf Of
> Steffen Ryll
> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 12:17 AM
> To: pas...@li...
> Subject: [Passwordsafe-devel] Concerns with use of security enhanced
> stringfunctions
> 
> Hi,
> 
> recently I decided to dedicate myself to helping with porting pwsafe to
> PocketPC.
> So far, I managed to configure the build environment correctly (at least
> I hope it is) for PocketPC compilation. The trouble is now, that only in
> the corelib project 244 compile errors are raised, much of them
> referring to security enhanced string functions introduced with CRT 8.0/
> VS2005 (e.g. _stprintf_s is used instead of _stprintf earlier).
> Though these function calls are in #ifdef blocks testing for VS2005 or
> newer, this doesn't seem to be good enough. I suppose, these new
> functions are available only in the native Win32 C library, not in the
> PocketPC versions.
> 
> Additionally, there seem to be backwards compatibility issues with some
> of these functions. According to, for instance
> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ce3zzk1k(VS.80).aspx ,
> _stprintf_s is identical to swprintf_s, but this is not supported by Win9x.
> 
> Thus, I want to raise the question, whether it is a good idea to make
> use of these security enhanced functions, in our opinion.
> I can see two possible solutions for that:
> 
> 1. Leave these new functions aside and stick to ANSI C string operations.
> 
> 2. Use the new functions where ever possible. To improve code then, the
> differentiation between old and new functions should be encapsulated in
> one class. On the other hand, this wouldn't solve backwards
> compatibility issues.
> 
> I'm personally more in favour of the first approach, because it makes
> porting to other platforms and OSs easier.
> 
> 
> One point concerning the port the PocketPC: Don't expect so much
> progress soon, as I'm not so much familiar with C++ and with pwsafe's
> source code. This forces to read a lot first :-)
> However, I'm planning to post a few questions and ideas soon, continuing
> the discussion Robert Altmann kicked off last year. But I'm not ready
> with these yet.
> 
> 
> Any comments?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Steffen
>