The company will issue a Rust Foundation grant to improve the security of its products.
C++ has long been one of the most popular general-purpose languages. However, its popularity has declined in recent years due to security concerns. Errors in working with memory are the source of most vulnerabilities in the products of major IT companies. This led to an active promotion of a safer Rust language and a negative attitude towards C/C++ on the part of many developers.
On February 5, Google announced that it will grant the Rust Foundation a million-dollar grant to integrate the new language with its C++products.
"Based on past vulnerability statistics, Rust has prevented hundreds of threats that could affect the Android ecosystem," says Dave Klaydermacher, Google's vice president of Android security. According to him, the investment is mainly aimed at implementing Rust in various components of this mobile platform.
Well-known personalities such as Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, and Jen Easterly, director of the CISA agency, are calling for the promotion of Rust as a more secure alternative to traditional languages. They have long recommended that companies consider using Rust in new projects that require increased reliability and security.
Lars Bergstrom, who heads the board of directors of the Rust Foundation, said that the funding will significantly improve the interaction of Rust code with legacy code bases.
"This is the most common obstacle faced by all organizations looking to expand their use of Rust. Many mission-critical systems and libraries are written in C++ or have an API only for this language, " comments Bergstrom.
For example, Google's Chromium project is mostly implemented in C++, which is also widely used in Android. In addition to C++, Android uses Java and some other languages.
Google is also working on adapting development tools such as cxx, autocxx, bindgen, cbindgen, diplomat, and crubit to enable efficient interaction between Rust and C++code.
According to Bergstrom, by mid-2023, Google already had more than 1,000 specialists who contributed to the development of Rust. In addition, the company recently published training materials on this language, and they are actively used within the team.
"We have a group that is working to improve the interaction between languages," he added. "We hope that the solutions proposed by this team to overcome the difficulties in the Google code base will be useful for the entire industry. They will also complement our investment in the Rust ecosystem."
Google's $ 1 million grant echoes a similar donation made last year by Microsoft . In addition, Microsoft has invested an additional $ 10 million in integrating Rust with its own developments.
Despite the technical advantages of Rust, the head of the foundation, Rebecca Rumbul, noted that in the foreseeable future, companies are unlikely to completely abandon the use of C++ and other similar languages. Therefore, the foundation has initiated a separate program aimed at ensuring the interaction of Rust with existing projects and tools.
C++ has long been one of the most popular general-purpose languages. However, its popularity has declined in recent years due to security concerns. Errors in working with memory are the source of most vulnerabilities in the products of major IT companies. This led to an active promotion of a safer Rust language and a negative attitude towards C/C++ on the part of many developers.
On February 5, Google announced that it will grant the Rust Foundation a million-dollar grant to integrate the new language with its C++products.
"Based on past vulnerability statistics, Rust has prevented hundreds of threats that could affect the Android ecosystem," says Dave Klaydermacher, Google's vice president of Android security. According to him, the investment is mainly aimed at implementing Rust in various components of this mobile platform.
Well-known personalities such as Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, and Jen Easterly, director of the CISA agency, are calling for the promotion of Rust as a more secure alternative to traditional languages. They have long recommended that companies consider using Rust in new projects that require increased reliability and security.
Lars Bergstrom, who heads the board of directors of the Rust Foundation, said that the funding will significantly improve the interaction of Rust code with legacy code bases.
"This is the most common obstacle faced by all organizations looking to expand their use of Rust. Many mission-critical systems and libraries are written in C++ or have an API only for this language, " comments Bergstrom.
For example, Google's Chromium project is mostly implemented in C++, which is also widely used in Android. In addition to C++, Android uses Java and some other languages.
Google is also working on adapting development tools such as cxx, autocxx, bindgen, cbindgen, diplomat, and crubit to enable efficient interaction between Rust and C++code.
According to Bergstrom, by mid-2023, Google already had more than 1,000 specialists who contributed to the development of Rust. In addition, the company recently published training materials on this language, and they are actively used within the team.
"We have a group that is working to improve the interaction between languages," he added. "We hope that the solutions proposed by this team to overcome the difficulties in the Google code base will be useful for the entire industry. They will also complement our investment in the Rust ecosystem."
Google's $ 1 million grant echoes a similar donation made last year by Microsoft . In addition, Microsoft has invested an additional $ 10 million in integrating Rust with its own developments.
Despite the technical advantages of Rust, the head of the foundation, Rebecca Rumbul, noted that in the foreseeable future, companies are unlikely to completely abandon the use of C++ and other similar languages. Therefore, the foundation has initiated a separate program aimed at ensuring the interaction of Rust with existing projects and tools.
