Reading security bulletens, I'm amazed at how many bugs and holes are in software.

The major web servers are stressing performance. Use OS tricks and dirty code, just to push bytes faster!

But, a personal desktop box doesn't need that kind of speed. We get a few hundred hits a day, tops. Instead, we need robustness.

So, how about a simple web server written in Perl? No buffer overflow bugs, because it's all in a high-level language. With existing libraries, a simple server that maps a URL to a local directory tree and serves up static web pages is maybe 20 lines, and may even be an example somewhere.

"Public" servers that don't have security issues because they don't have any dynamic behavior and don't differentiate between allowed and disallowed users already exist. But the next step up would be to have dynamic behavior. A server written in Perl would very easily accomidate dynamic URL content in Perl, I would think. All taint-checked from top to bottom, and not overrun with excess features.

Does something like this already exist? If not, any other comments or ideas on the matter?

—John

In reply to HTTP Server, anyone? by John M. Dlugosz

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