In $ SAFE = 4, an almost unlimited set of vulnerabilities is possible. Nothing can protect you from all the arbitrary bad things you can do for this code. For example, you can do all kinds of dumb things with confidential data in the database, if you are not careful no matter what mode $ SAFE is for web applications, in fact this should be a much more serious problem than what $ SAFE helps you with. $ SAFE dramatically protects you from one common thing that you can do wrong, leaving everyone else open. See last year's Underhanded C Contest winner:
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