By Andrey_Karpov_2009
Software developers produce more than 100 billion lines of code for commercial systems each year. Even with automated testing tools, errors still occur at a rate of one error for every 10,000 lines of code. While many coding standards address code style issues (i.e., style guides), CERT secure coding standards focus on identifying unsafe, unreliable, and insecure coding practices, such as those that resulted in the Heartbleed vulnerability. For more than 10 years, the CERT Secure Coding Initiative at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institutehas been working to develop guidance—most recently, The CERT C Secure Coding Standard: Second Edition—for developers and programmers through the development of coding standards by security researchers, language experts, and software developers using a wiki-based community process. This blog post explores the importance of a well-documented and enforceable coding standard in helping programmers circumvent pitfalls and avoid vulnerabilities.