Software bug in the context of "Security vulnerabilities"

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⭐ Core Definition: Software bug

A software bug is a design defect (bug) in computer software. A computer program with many or serious bugs may be described as buggy.

The effects of a software bug range from minor (such as a misspelled word in the user interface) to severe (such as frequent crashing).

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👉 Software bug in the context of Security vulnerabilities

In computer security, vulnerabilities are flaws or weaknesses in a system's design, implementation, or management that can be exploited by a malicious actor to compromise its security.

Despite a system administrator's best efforts to achieve complete correctness, virtually all hardware and software contain bugs where the system does not behave as expected. If the bug could enable an attacker to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of system resources, it can be considered a vulnerability. Insecure software development practices as well as design factors such as complexity can increase the burden of vulnerabilities.

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Software bug in the context of OpenBSD

OpenBSD is a security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. The OpenBSD project emphasizes portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security, and integrated cryptography.

The OpenBSD project maintains portable versions of many subsystems as packages for other operating systems. Because of the project's preferred BSD license, which allows binary redistributions without the source code, many components are reused in proprietary and corporate-sponsored software projects. The firewall code in Apple's macOS is based on OpenBSD's PF firewall code, Android's Bionic C standard library is based on OpenBSD code, LLVM uses OpenBSD's regular expression library, and Windows 10 uses OpenSSH (OpenBSD Secure Shell) with LibreSSL.

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Software bug in the context of Cyberattack

A cyberattack (or cyber attack) occurs when there is an unauthorized action against computer infrastructure that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its content.

The rising dependence on increasingly complex and interconnected computer systems in most domains of life is the main factor that causes vulnerability to cyberattacks, since virtually all computer systems have bugs that can be exploited by attackers. Although it is impossible or impractical to create a perfectly secure system, there are many defense mechanisms that can make a system more difficult to attack, making information security a field of rapidly increasing importance in the world today.

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Software bug in the context of Swift (programming language)

Swift is a high-level general-purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language created by Chris Lattner in 2010 for Apple Inc. and maintained by the open-source community. Swift compiles to machine code and uses an LLVM-based compiler. Swift was first released in June 2014 and the Swift toolchain has shipped in Xcode since Xcode version 6, released in September 2014.

Apple intended Swift to support many core concepts associated with Objective-C, notably dynamic dispatch, widespread late binding, extensible programming, and similar features, but in a "safer" way, making it easier to catch software bugs; Swift has features addressing some common programming errors like null pointer dereferencing and provides syntactic sugar to help avoid the pyramid of doom. Swift supports the concept of protocol extensibility, an extensibility system that can be applied to types, structs and classes, which Apple promotes as a real change in programming paradigms they term "protocol-oriented programming" (similar to traits and type classes).

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Software bug in the context of Legacy technology

In computing, a legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program, "of, relating to, or being a previous or outdated computer system", yet still in use. Often referencing a system as "legacy" means that it paved the way for the standards that would follow it. This can also imply that the system is out of date or in need of replacement.

Legacy code is old computer source code that is no longer supported on standard hardware and environments, and is a codebase that is in some respect obsolete or supporting something obsolete. Legacy code may be written in programming languages, use frameworks and external libraries, or use architecture and patterns that are no longer considered modern, increasing the mental burden and ramp-up time for software engineers who work on the codebase. Legacy code may have zero or insufficient automated tests, making refactoring dangerous and likely to introduce bugs. Long-lived code is susceptible to software rot, where changes to the runtime environment, or surrounding software or hardware may require maintenance or emulation of some kind to keep working. Legacy code may be present to support legacy hardware, a separate legacy system, or a legacy customer using an old feature or software version.

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