Amit, hackers attack the running process, which executes the machine instructions, not the source code. At this point private, protected and public are out of the picture. The compiler uses them to enforce what source code is valid, but they are not present in the compiled code or in the running process in any way, therefore they have absolutely no effect on what a hacker can or can't do.

You say that you don't program in C++, and you demonstrate lack of even basic knowledge of the language, yet you took the time to find this mailing list, register, and post nonsense. I truly can't understand why people here are so patient with you, when others with much better arguments for their proposals and opinions are met with scathing rebuttals.

On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 4:13 PM Amit via Std-Discussion <std-discussion@lists.isocpp.org> wrote:
I am again saying that I had already agreed to it and till that time there was no acrimony.

I am pasting my reply below. Please read the last line of my reply.

-----------------------------
I had read many times that hackers have taken control of a system by using a RCE (Remote Code Ececution) attack.

So, they are also doing it from outside the process.

The virtual table pointer is at the bottom of the C++ object structure. So, the virtual functions addresses can be changed to some other code/function address.

But anyways, I just highlighted this. Its ok with me if there is no security issue because of this.

Regards,
Amit
-----------------------------

Ideally, the discussion should have stopped here after I agreed.

But after that Tiago Freire wrote this:

----------------------
In fact, this is not exclusive to C++, it’s been a thing in programming since before you were born.
-----------------------

Tiago Freire made an assumption and it was wrong and it offended me, so I repled back.

If Tiago Freire wouldn't have wriiten about when I was born then we wouldn't have gotten into this mess.

What's the need to get personal on a mailng list?

Regards,
Amit



On Mon, Feb 17, 2025, 7:19 PM mauro russo via Std-Discussion <std-discussion@lists.isocpp.org> wrote:
Please, Amit, don't take It personally.

Maybe, anyone might not be kind, but for sure I see Thiago is just trying tò explain.

This is not social media.

However, again, from inside a process, in assembly, you can access whatever you want in your memory, there is no OOP-protection at that level, not even any security risk about that.
If an hacker has hands in the code (and this may happen... e.g. in open source projects), this is not matter of programming language, but of development process and SW lifecycle.
For your complain, you should ask to HW makers, or OS makers. But all here believe that this would not make sense.
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