The Big, Bad World
Someone once said, “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”[2] Most of the time we are defending against stupidity, against invalid and unchecked assumptions. However there are malicious users, and they will try to bend and break your code to suit their vicious purposes.
Defensive programming helps with program security, guarding against this kind of willful misuse. Crackers and virus writers routinely exploit sloppy code to gain control of an application and then weave whatever wicked schemes they desire. This is a serious threat in the modern world of software development; it has huge implications in terms of the loss of productivity, money, and privacy.
Software abusers range from the opportunistic ...
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