Secure Coding in Rust

Memory Safety Without Garbage Collection

Rust achieves memory safety through its ownership system:

1. Each value has a single owner
2. Ownership can be transferred (move semantics)
3. References are either mutable XOR shared

Preventing Use-After-Free

// This won't compile - use after move
fn main() {
    let s = String::from("hello");
    let s2 = s; // ownership moved
    println!("{}", s); // ERROR: borrow of moved value
}

Preventing Data Races

// This won't compile - mutable and immutable references coexist
fn main() {
    let mut data = vec![1, 2, 3];
    let r1 = &data;
    let r2 = &mut data; // ERROR: cannot borrow as mutable
    println!("{:?}", r1);
}

Real-World Impact

These compile-time guarantees eliminate entire classes of vulnerabilities:

• Buffer overflows
• Use-after-free
• Double-free
• Data races
• Null pointer dereferences

Further Reading

• The Rust Book
• Rust Security Guidelines
• Rust Sec – Security advisories