Bjarne Stroustrup Urges Action to Address Memory Safety Concerns in C++

Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, has called on the C++ community to take urgent action in response to growing concerns about memory safety. C and C++ have been criticized for their reliance on manual memory management, which can lead to security vulnerabilities. In recent years, cybersecurity agencies and industry experts have increasingly recommended memory-safe languages such as Rust, Go, and Swift. Stroustrup warns that C++ faces ‘serious attacks’ due to this trend and advocates for the adoption of his ‘Profiles’ framework to enhance safety while preserving the language’s strengths.

A recent report from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has reinforced the urgency of this issue, advising software manufacturers to implement a memory-safety roadmap by 2026 or transition to safer programming languages. While Stroustrup supports modernizing C++ with improved safety tools rather than abandoning it, some experts argue that such efforts may not progress quickly enough. Others, like David Chisnall, stress that memory safety solutions must work across different languages.

With Google and government agencies pushing for memory-safe programming, the future of C++ remains uncertain. Whether the language can evolve to meet modern security expectations or face further marginalization remains an open question.