Don't Trust Anything! Real-world Uses For WebAssembly

YOW! Melbourne 2023

Let's face it, we all use libraries written by strangers on the internet that we shouldn't entirely trust. It's not just that there could be malicious code but even a library with an accidental vulnerability can wreak havoc.

You've probably heard of WebAssembly, but maybe you think of it as only relevant to browsers and front end development. It was created for browsers, but now WebAssembly is a battle-tested, fast, standardised, language-independent and cross-platform runtime. Most importantly, it was designed from the ground up to securely run untrusted code.

This talk will go through how WebAssembly works with practical examples and explore case studies of real-world companies using WebAssembly to run code securely and efficiently.