Beyond Single-Vulnerability Evaluation: Closing the Engineering Decision Gap Between C Retrofits and Native Safety

2026-08-15

AI Summary

This study addresses the lack of compositional evaluation in C memory safety retrofitting, which hinders informed engineering decisions. We propose a pioneering cross-language standardized compositional evaluation paradigm. By establishing a unified benchmark and comparing against natively safe languages, this work systematically reveals the compound performance overhead, architectural conflicts, and protection gaps inherent in layered defenses. Our findings demonstrate that the comprehensive efficacy of retrofitting mechanisms falls short of native memory safety, thereby delineating clear decision boundaries between migration and retrofitting strategies. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this research shifts memory safety inquiry from isolated mechanism analysis toward a holistic comparative framework, providing critical empirical evidence to guide the evolution of system security.

Abstract

While decades of research have produced numerous retrofitted memory-safety protections for C, these mechanisms are almost exclusively evaluated in isolation, targeting specific vulnerability classes. This siloed evaluation paradigm leaves practitioners without a clear understanding of the cumulative performance costs, interoperability conflicts, and protection gaps that arise when layering defenses to achieve comprehensive safety. This paper presents a new evaluation paradigm that benchmarks natively memory-safe languages like Rust and Go against compounded C retrofits. Using standardized cross-language tasks, we evaluate the performance and protection tradeoffs of state-of-the-art mechanisms when deployed in combination. Our results demonstrate that layered C defenses incur compounding and workload-dependent performance penalties, can suffer from fundamental architectural incompatibilities, and fall short of the protection scope provided by native memory-safe languages. These findings expose a critical engineering decision gap where the true cost of backporting safety to C remains hidden from practitioners. We argue for a fundamental shift in memory-safety research: moving away from isolated evaluation toward holistic, comparative frameworks that inform the high-stakes choice between retrofitting legacy codebases and migrating to modern, safe languages.

Problem

• Memory Safety
• C Retrofits
• Evaluation Paradigm
• Engineering Decision Gap
• Native Safety

Innovation

• Memory Safety Retrofitting
• Cross-Language Benchmarking
• Layered Defense Evaluation
• Engineering Decision Gap
• Native Safe Languages