What is memory safety?
Memory safety, in computer science and software development, relates to the quality of a programming language or system.
Memory safety guarantees that software cannot interact with or modify memory in ways that might result in memory-related errors or vulnerabilities. Memory safety plays an important role in maintaining the security and reliability of software applications.
Important elements of memory safety include (but are not limited to):
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Preventing buffer overflows
Programming languages and runtime environments that prioritize memory safety stop buffer overflows. A buffer overflow is when a program writes data past the limits of a memory buffer (for example, an array), which can compromise data, crash programs, or even empower malicious actors to execute arbitrary code.
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Getting rid of dangling pointers
Memory safety mechanisms remove dangling pointers (pointers that point to memory locations that have been deallocated or released).
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Validating null pointers
Memory-safe languages commonly include checks to prevent null or uninitialized pointers from being dereferenced. Dereferencing null pointers can provoke program crashes and undefined behavior.