The dreadnought (alternatively spelled dreadnaught) was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. Want to learn more about how we can help protect your business? Get a free trial below.USS Texas, the only dreadnought still in existence, was launched in 1912 and is now a museum ship Malwarebytes removes all remnants of ransomware and prevents you from getting reinfected. What we have here is yet another good reason to finally make the leap from Windows 10 to 11. While the “wouldn’t it be nice” dream of replacing all pieces of C and C++ in Windows with safer, better alternatives is likely impossible, big and important strides in memory safety are finally being made. As per The Register, the Microsoft Windows graphics interface device is currently being ported to Rust to the tune of 36,000 lines of Rust code, and there’s a system call (SysCall) in the Windows kernel right now which is implemented in Rust. ![]() The work of switching out C++ for Rust in Windows 11 has already begun. This approach has already proven to be more reliable than hoping programmers will do the right thing: The adoption of memory safe languages in Android, which predates Windows by several years, has lead to signficiant decline in memory safety vulnerabilities on that platform.Īccording to Google, in situations where Rust has been used on low-level Android components instead of C++, there have been "zero memory safety vulnerabilities discovered." The only way to root them out completely is to switch away from C and C++ to a memory safe language like Rust that can manage memory automatically. When the system’s memory is tampered with in this way it can lead to all manner of exploitation.ĭespite endless attempts to get programmers to write more secure code, improvements to the underlying languages, and mitigations like Windows Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), buffer overflows continue to be a huge problem. This is when data written to a buffer spills out and overwrites nearby memory. Bugs and errors in this area can lead to exploitation, and making the memory unstable can cause malfunctions or allow for malicious code.Ī huge part of this is the dreaded buffer overflow attack, which has been around since the 1970s. ![]() When people with bad intentions stroll into town, one of the key places they prod around is in the realm of memory. Traditionally, the most popular coding languages for kernels have been C and C++, which provide excellent performance and lots of flexibility, and a lot of rope to hang yourself with when it comes to security. These issues aren’t just Windows specific-you can end up with a kernel disaster on a Mac, or over in Linux land, too.Ī big part of kernel exploitation is focused on memory management. If an attacker successfully compromises a kernel, they can expect to have full control over the device it's running on, which is of course very bad indeed. It's one of the first things to fire up when a computer is switched on, and then it sits in memory permanently, mediating between the computer's applications and hardware. Why is this such good news? Well, the kernel is the core component of a computer operating system and is crucial to how it functions. If you're on the Win11 Insider ring, you're getting the first taste of Rust in the Windows kernel! /uyZkK2vRLY That moment has now arrived for folks on the Windows 11 Insider program: However, he also mentioned that Rust would be making an appearance in the operating system’s Kernel “in the next several weeks or months”. ![]() It is highly desired by some programmers-you can see his excitement in the below talk from Blue Hat IL 2023:Īt the time, he cautioned that “rewriting Windows in Rust isn’t going to happen anytime soon”. Rust matches the performance of languages like C and C++ while being easier to debug and maintain, and-most importantly-memory safe. At the end of April, Microsoft’s VP of OS Security and Enterprise referenced upcoming changes to Windows involving the programming language Rust. Some important changes are heading to Windows which should make the operating system quite a bit more secure than it is now.
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