David Weston, vice president of Microsoft responsible for Windows operating system security, shared information about the development of Windows protection mechanisms in his report at the BlueHat IL 2023 conference. Among other things, he mentioned progress in employing the Rust language to enhance the security of the Windows kernel. Moreover, it was stated that the code written in Rust would potentially be added to the Windows 11 kernel in just a few months or even weeks.
The primary motivations for using Rust include utilizing tools for safe memory handling and working to reduce code errors. The initial goal is to replace some internal data types in C++ with equivalent types provided in Rust. Currently, around 36,000 lines of Rust code have been prepared for inclusion in the kernel. Testing the system with the new code showed no negative impact on performance in PCMark 10 (office application test), and in some microbenchmarks, the new code even turned out to be faster.
The first area where Rust was implemented is the DWriteCore code, which handles font parsing. Two developers were involved in the project, spending six months on the rewrite. The new implementation rewritten in Rust improved glyph rendering performance for text by 5-15%. The second area of Rust application is the implementation of the REGION data type in Win32k GDI (Graphics Driver Interface). The components of the GDI interface rewritten in Rust have successfully passed all tests when used in Windows, and soon the new code is planned to be included by default in test builds of Windows 11 Insider. Other achievements related to Rust include the translation of certain Windows system calls to this language.
Zdroj: opennet.ru
