Why Code Security Matters - Even in Hardened Environments

Infrastructure hardening can make applications more resilient to attacks but cannot replace fundamental code security. Attackers can still leverage vulnerabilities in the source code, even with infrastructure hardening measures in place. This blog post highlights a technique that turns a file write vulnerability in a Node.js application into remote code execution, even when the target's file system is mounted read-only. The technique exploits exposed pipe file descriptors to gain code execution and can be applied to other software using libuv, like Julia. This demonstrates why code security is crucial and why vulnerabilities should be fixed at their source: the source code.