In the final analysis you have a microprocessor executing machine code. Any rules that the production process of the target machine's software attempted to enforce, by using a particular high level language translator, whether it be rust or any other high level language, can always be subverted; if the attacker can deliver his exploit code to the target machine and then kick the cpu into running that exploit with a sufficiently high privilege level. Processor designers have attempted to provide various ways of locking down the hardware (eg, intel SGX, 'Intel Hardware Shield' , the AMD/ARM equivalents, and so on) which in turn were rapidly broken or are in the process of being cracked by security researchers and hackers.
It's a never-ending arms race. Whether software written in 'Rust' is really any more secure than software written in C is open to question. I suspect as one category of exploits is closed off, others will be opened. The programming techniques that mitigate against well-known exploits in C code such as buffer overflows have been known for many years, they only need to be taught and actually used. Will considerably more complex translators like Rust really make it impossible for the programmers (fresh graduates, H1Bs or offshore) that companies typically want to hire, to write code that can be exploited? I doubt it. So I remain skeptical of the claims of the people selling "safe" high-level language translators; it sounds like snake-oil to me. It very much remains to be seen whether real software written in 'Rust' is actually any "safer" than software written in C.
It's a never-ending arms race. Whether software written in 'Rust' is really any more secure than software written in C is open to question. I suspect as one category of exploits is closed off, others will be opened. The programming techniques that mitigate against well-known exploits in C code such as buffer overflows have been known for many years, they only need to be taught and actually used. Will considerably more complex translators like Rust really make it impossible for the programmers (fresh graduates, H1Bs or offshore) that companies typically want to hire, to write code that can be exploited? I doubt it. So I remain skeptical of the claims of the people selling "safe" high-level language translators; it sounds like snake-oil to me. It very much remains to be seen whether real software written in 'Rust' is actually any "safer" than software written in C.
Last edited:
I had one C++ book somewhere in the mid ‘90s, can’t remember number of pages, but it was thickest book on the shelf (and that’s was next to the “Microsoft Windows 95 Resource Kit”). I really tried, I did, but stupid me never managed to grasp OO. Furthest I went was K&R C (ANSI), and that only for very simple routines.
