Evaluate possibility of printf-injection attacks in Go about go-rosenpass HOT 1 CLOSED

Go is not inherently susceptible to printf() format-string injection attacks. One of the key reasons for this is that Go's fmt.Printf and related functions use positional parameters instead of relying on format string parsing to determine the number and type of arguments.

In C-based languages like C and C++, format string vulnerabilities can occur when an attacker can control the format string argument passed to functions like printf, sprintf, etc. If the format string is not properly sanitized or validated, it can lead to unintended behaviors or even security vulnerabilities.

However, in Go, you would typically see code like this:

fmt.Printf("The answer is %d\n", 42)

Unlike C-based languages where the format string can include format specifiers like %s or %n, Go's fmt package only interprets the format string to identify placeholders like %d for integers, %s for strings, etc., but it doesn't perform arbitrary format string parsing.

This design choice significantly reduces the risk of format-string vulnerabilities in Go.

See also

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/66103343/8178705

Future improvements

Add CI checks to check against usage of printf-style format strings (see #49)

from go-rosenpass.