[Not really OT] Crowdstrike Analysis: It was a NULL pointer from the memory unsafe C++ language.

[Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole]

On 25/07/2024 2:24 PM, Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole wrote:
> On 25/07/2024 12:12 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> I talked with a person who has more in depth knowledge about it.
>>
>> The null pointer came from reading a file and treating it as a data 
>> structure. The file was unexpectedly full of zeros.
>>
>> Any language that allows casting a buffer read from the disk to a 
>> pointer would fail. This includes any language with unsafe blocks, or 
>> uses a FFI to get around the language protections.
> 
> You have almost got it.
> 
> It is not any language with that capability, it is any language with 
> that capability that does not force you to check for null before the 
> dereference.

Note: you do not need to leave safety to have this exact situation to occur.

```d
void func(int* ptr) @safe {
	int v = *ptr; // BOOM!
}
```

The problem isn't going into unsafe code, its that you made an 
assumption that either is the reality, or is never correct and is 
guaranteed to error out.