Start with Burroughs Large Machines from 1961, do a stop at Xerox PARC, visit ETHZ, Bell Labs, Amsterdam University, Caltech, Tao Group, UCSD, IBM and Unisys mainframes, Microsoft R&D, and already there are several bytecodes to look into.
The hype around WebAssembly is also not very interesting for those of us that have read hundreds of papers on those bytecodes, but hey there is VC money to burn.
I think that network effects win over technical merit every time, and this time WebAssembly has the momentum. I think it's pretty neat that you can take a web server written in C++, implement some new compression algorithm in Go, and then have that web server compress pages with your Go code without having to recompile the webserver or touch any of its code. That's what WebAssembly outside of the browser offers; you can just write stuff in your language of choosing for other products. All the VC hype just means that everyone picked the same backend so there is some possibility of traction.
In reality, some flaws are preventing adoption. C and Rust are pretty much the only viable languages with WebAssembly support, and since those are also the chosen implementation languages for runtime, nobody is really deriving this benefit. (Anything with a runtime seems to fail for programs beyond "hello world".)
(I tried a "real program" and WebAssembly once, but it ran out of memory when compiled with either gc or tinygo. We had to write the browser side of things in Javascript, which was a shame. The code in question was: https://github.com/pachyderm/pachyderm/blob/master/src/inter.... Somewhat complex, but not so complex you can't do it in Javascript. So a bit of a shame that WebAssembly didn't work out.)
The other thing that I think WebAssembly should fix (but people seem to want to kill me when I mention this) is that the Typescript compiler should just output WebAssembly and we can forget about node_modules and Webpack and that whole nightmare. There is AssemblyScript, but it doesn't run React, so doesn't matter for this use case.
Someday I will go insane and just compile node or deno to WebAssembly and just ship the whole VM with my app embedded in it. Then you'll have a real reason to want to kill me! Muahahaha.
There's some cool stuff going on with GC in WebAssembly, which should really help bring higher level languages efficiently to WASM: https://v8.dev/blog/wasm-gc-porting.
I know that there are existing bytecodes. I'm asking what you think WebAssembly should have learned from them but didn't. But based on your response I'm guessing you don't really have that kind of thoughtful critique of WebAssembly?
Here is one, despite all the security marketing, programs inside the sandbox can still be tricked into internal memory corruption, as there is no way to prevent bounds checking inside the same linear memory segment.
So they are bound to black box attacks, where a clever sequence of function calls can eventually result in something being allowed that wasn't before, as the internal memory state of the WASM module is now corrupt.
This is correct, and it's something people who use WASM for security need to be aware of. My program can use WASM to execute untrusted user-supplied code (such as web pages) safely, but compiling my application to WASM and running it in a sandboxed VM doesn't protect me from security bugs in my own code.
Is this an example of WASM not learning from other bytecodes though? 1) Has other bytecodes fixed it? It's not like compiling your C application to CLR protects you from internal memory corruption bugs either, right? And 2) Was protecting against internal memory corruption even a goal? To me it always seemed like the purpose of WASM is to be a cross platform way to run untrusted code sandboxed, just like JS but faster and more appropriate as a compilation target; and whether you compile to WASM or JS, your C program might have memory corruption bugs.
If you're only complaining about the VC-funded hype machine, I could probably be convinced that WASM is sold as something it isn't. I haven't seen it myself really but it's exactly what those sorts of people are wont to do. But that's surely a critique of the hype machine, not of WASM failing to learn from other bytecode designs, no?
This doesn't say what you're claiming. It just says that webasm stack frames are next to each other like C. A C program that crashes will crash in webasm.
"A C program that crashes will crash in webasm" is exactly what pjmpl said. The sandbox doesn't protect the sandboxes program from internal memory corruption.
You should stop arguing. He's correct in this critique, and you don't even disagree that he's correct. The problem is that it's a critique of how (he alleges) hype/VC people have over-sold WASM, not an actual problem with WASM.
You should stop arguing, because the claim of insecurity is not being backed up by anything.
Show me an exploit, show me with detailed and technical information, show some sort of evidence.
Both of you are just repeating your claim more forcefully, never adding anything that backs up your claims.
Compiling C to webasm doesn't fix C bugs within the local memory space of webasm? No one has those expectations except people with a bizarre vendetta against a simple and benign technology like webasm.
pjmlp's claim is: there are people out there who over-hype WASM, who claim that simply compiling a C program to WASM will automatically make it secure. pjmlp is claiming that these over-hyped claims are wrong (in their words: "programs inside the sandbox can still be tricked into internal memory corruption"). You agree that those over-hyped claims are wrong (in your own words: "compiling C to webasm doesn't fix C bugs within the local memory space of webasm"). I agree that those over-hyped claims are wrong.
If one wants to argue against pjmlp (as you and I both do), there are two ways to go: 1) you can say that nobody is making those claims, or 2) you can say that if people are making those claims, the problem is with those people, not WASM.
I choose #2, because it seems plausible to me that VC-backed startup types over-hype WASM. If I was more familiar with the discourse around WASM, I might try to argue #1 if I thought I could demonstrate that over-hyping WASM doesn't really happen. Maybe you could go the burden of proof route, that it's their responsibility to prove that people are over-hyping WASM and take the discussion from there.
But you ... don't seem to be engaging with the argument. You agree that "compiling C to wasm doesn't fix C bugs within the local memory space of wasm", yet you say that "the claim of insecurity is not being backed up by anything" when the claim of insecurity is that compiling C to wasm doesn't fix C bugs within the local memory space of wasm. That's literally what was meant by "internal memory corruption" in pjmlp's very first comment which mentioned the security angle. Again, they're wrong to mention this as a flaw of WASM because making C code resistant against "internal memory corruption" was never a goal of WASM, but that doesn't mean that their "claim of insecurity" is wrong.
To show an example of the kind of exploit pjmlp is talking about, just take any C program with some kind of exploitable buffer overflow, run it in wasmtime or wasmer or whatever, and exploit the buffer overflow. Maybe the buffer overflow lets an attacker write 101 bytes to a 100 byte buffer and therefore flip an "isAdministrator" flag from 0 to 1. You, I and pjmlp all agree that such security issues can exist; WASM doesn't magically protect C code from memory corruption. And that is not a flaw in WASM, which is what your argument should be focusing on.
You both need to stop conflating bugs in a C program that become bugs in webasm with insecurity.
Insecurity would be escaping the VM it runs in. In a native compiled binary you have infinite permissions and can make system calls. You can't do that in a webasm VM.
Webasm is not insecure because a C program that crashes also crashes in webasm.
You still haven't shown any evidence of escaping the VM or actual insecurity.
Web pages can have insecure JavaScript even if the sandbox isn't escaped. Sandbox escape isn't the only possible vulnerability in sandboxed applications. This is basic stuff that I know you already agree with so I don't understand why you keep pressing it.
"Why would you blame WASM" is the right question. As I have said in LITERALLY every single comment so far, blaming WASM instead of the alleged hype people is where pjmlp is wrong. He's not wrong in the assertion that insecure programs may remain insecure when run in the WASM sandbox. But you refuse to listen. This conversation is like talking to a much less polite ChatGPT.
Fucking hell, please pay attention to the discussion you're in. pjmlp's claim is: marketing around WASM suggests that running C programs in WASM instead of natively magically makes those C programs safe.
YES! I DISAGREE WITH PJMLK! ALL MY RESPONSES TO PJMLK HAVE BEEN ME DISAGREEING WITH HIM! ALL MY RESPONSES TO YOU HAVE BEEN ABOUT HOW YOU CAN ARGUE AGAINST HIM BETTER BY UNDERSTAND WHICH WRONG CLAIMS HE ACTUALLY MADE, SO THAT YOU'RE NOT ARGUING AGAINST STRAW MEN! PAY ATTENTION!
This is my last response in this thread. You've displayed a profound inability to think. I can't be part of this anymore.
That looks like you have to load up a local file with an exploit, use a png library not being used by major software that also doesn't check for issues with the png file (because they already need to deal with malicious files) and the end result is that it will run javascript if javascript is able to be run from webasm in that context.
It is still worth looking at and is actual information, so I appreciate that.
Don't focus on the specific exploit, it's a general issue:
In order to be useful, your wasm application will likely have to be able to make systems calls, or whatever its equivalent might be on your particular host environment. If you can corrupt internal state, you can control the arguments to these calls. The severity of the issue will depend on what your application is allowed to do: If all it has access to is a some virtual file system, the host will still be safe. But if that virtual file system contains sensitive data, results may nevertheless be catastrophic if, say, it can also request resources over http.
given the absolute idiocy some of them finance WASM is a paragon of sensibility and should be injected money via IV. special mentions go out to softbank, tiger global and a16z.
The hype around WebAssembly is also not very interesting for those of us that have read hundreds of papers on those bytecodes, but hey there is VC money to burn.