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TETRA RustIEC

RustIEC is a VLAIO TETRA project (grant HBC.2021.0066) with the goal of teaching Flanders' companies proficiency in the Rust programming language. The project has a specific focus on secure IoT systems, secure edge computing, and secure cloud computing.

The RustIEC project is run by the Smartnets lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the DistriNet lab of the KU Leuven. Meet the team!

Project goal

Problems with memory, such as memory leaks, buffer overflows, and memory dumps, are well-known issues with software that could be exploited by attackers. The amount of cyber attacks increases year after year. Not only large companies, but also smaller companies are more often the target of attacks, and could face severe consequences.

With most programming languages like C and C++, these issues with memory management are noticed late, usually during runtime. They might not appear during compilation or debugging. When these problems only become apparent in production, they can lead to great damage. The search to their root cause can also be time consuming.

The Rust programming language provides an adequate answer. The compiler will not allow the developer to write unsafe code. Inherently by its design, the amount of mistakes in written Rust code is lower. As a consequence, mistakes are more often avoided by their conception, which makes maintenance of software easier. Rust allows, at the same time, to write performant code. This programming language is well-documented, and many libraries are available for embedded systems as well as for regular platforms.

The most important goal of this project is to acquiant companies with the advantages that Rust could provide them, such that they can make the trade-off of using Rust for future projects for themselves.

We envision these results:

• Two complete case-studies, for which the code will be shared openly.
• Benchmarks made for comparing the performance of Rust and more mainsteram programming languages such as C, C++ and Python, for some frequent and representative algorithms in the IoT and security domains.
• Research to interoperability of Rust with other programming languages and the portability to other platforms.
• Research of the efficiency of conversion tools surch as C2Rust and CRUST.
• Organisation of one introductory and one more advanced hands-on workshop about learning Rust, and publishing the workshop material.
• Integrating the gained knowledge in at least three courses for both research institutions.

Project participants