98
votes
Accepted
Is it a security vulnerability to declare class members as public?
Access modifiers like public/private/protected are not intended as a security boundary. And since C++ is not a memory-safe language, this cannot be a security boundary.
The laziest “attack” to access ...
- 136k
14
votes
Is it a security vulnerability to declare class members as public?
Using public and private correctly (and following good practices in general) helps you write better code with fewer bugs, and code with fewer bugs is typically harder for an attacker to exploit. ...
- 414
10
votes
Why does C not support direct array assignment?
C originally came from a predecessor language called B, made by Ken Thompson. In B, there were no types. Everything was a "word" (basically, an int).
In B, arrays were just pointers to the ...
- 376
9
votes
Accepted
Why does C not support direct array assignment?
Why does C not support direct array assignment?
It is arguably a shortcoming, due to missing features around arrays, but one the original designers choose not to resolve. Add in the (over) emphasis ...
- 34.8k
8
votes
Accepted
Why List<T>.Enumerator is struct?
According to a video from a conference session called "Writing Allocation Free Code In C#", the Net Core team is taking efforts to reduce unnecessary object allocations. Since struct is a "Value" ...
- 46.5k
8
votes
Is it a security vulnerability to declare class members as public?
Private and protected do not provide any security at all. Why? Because they are in your source code. They only affect code written by someone with access to your source code.
If I have access to your ...
- 49.4k
8
votes
Accepted
Few unusual C/C++ declarations
But nowhere in the code the actual Enum had been defined by something like EnumKeys test;
For the enumeration, there may never be any declaration of a variable of that type, but it may be used for ...
- 4,981
7
votes
Is it a security vulnerability to declare class members as public?
I have always wondered whether public, protected, and private has security implications post compilation.
Since you're asking about C++, I'd say the answer is "not per se" (unless this ...
- 179
3
votes
Is it a security vulnerability to declare class members as public?
No
Reason: Once compiled, private, protected and public are gone.
In C++, you can think about these keywords as nothing more or less than directives to tell the compiler that certain member accesses ...
3
votes
Struct or class for wrapping an int when 0 isn't a valid value
To be more precise at the valid values: they have to have 5 or 6 digits. The first 4 can have any value between 1000 and 9999, the remaining digit(s) are either between 1 and 4 or 1 and 12
Given these ...
- 39.6k
2
votes
Accepted
Struct or class for wrapping an int when 0 isn't a valid value
In a comment, you wrote
with a struct I didn't need to explicitely implement equality and I didn't have to do null checks. Therefore I'd prefer a struct.
If the requirement is just to wrap an int, ...
- 221k
2
votes
Struct or class for wrapping an int when 0 isn't a valid value
You need a requirements review.
Not every integer value is valid
This is a very weak requirement. There is no computer in existence for which this isn't true. Some ints are so long they'd fill ...
- 120k
2
votes
Is it a security vulnerability to declare class members as public?
For public/protected/private to be making a difference, you would have to be allowing someone to compile and link their C++ code against your headers & binary.
If someone already has that much ...
- 1,047
1
vote
Is it a security vulnerability to declare class members as public?
Security implies that you wish to protect something. Anyone with the right tools can disassemble the binary, look at what is being done, and, with enough time and experience, can reasonably infer the ...
- 137
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible