Rust Foundation leads the charge to improve critical systems security

Dive Brief:

• The Rust Foundation launched the Safety-Critical Rust Consortium Wednesday, a group dedicated to the responsible use of the programming language in critical applications. 
• The consortium includes several new and existing manufacturers, software firms and other organizations, including AdaCore, Ferrous Systems, OxidOS, Lynx Software Technologies, TrustInSoft, and Woven by Toyota. 
• The consortium plans to expand the use of Rust as a secure programming language among critical infrastructure and other providers. It is seeking to add additional members, including academic, legal and industry experts.

Dive Brief:

The group is forming at a time of heightened concerns about software security across the open source community and with the federal officials tasked with developing more resilience in key critical infrastructure sectors. 

Rust is considered one of the most memory-safe programming languages currently available for development purposes. Federal officials, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have encouraged manufacturers to shift toward memory safe languages that will reduce the overall risk of software vulnerabilities. 

“We are not content to just sit back and say, well you know this is a great memory-safe language to do what you will with it,” Rebecca Rumbul, executive director and CEO of the Rust Foundation said. “We want to make sure we are kind of preparing the ground for companies and users around the world to use it to the best of their abilities.”