4 ms·

Obligatory could this have been done in rust and work the same without the vulnerability? Or are there some problems that make it unreasonable to do?

• smoldesu 5y ago
  There are very few things C can do that Rust can't, but there are lots of things you probably shouldn't use Rust for: this being one of them. On a purely speculative level though? Sure, it's totally possible as long as you're willing to break out a few unsafe blocks.
  • steveklabnik 5y ago
    Why is Rust a "shouldn't" here? (And usually, parsing doesn't require any unsafe blocks, though it's not 100% clear to me exactly if this would or would not require it if things were written in Rust. It also depends on how much is... it's not a simple yes or no, which is one reason why I am curious about your opinion.)
    • Seirdy 5y ago
      I'd imagine that portability along with avoiding the need to add a significant dependency to the kernel's core toolchain (rustc, llvm) are two reasons. Rust's involvement in the kernel is mostly relegated to less-essential modules for a reason.