On Tuesday Google discovered an open-source version of the Android Operating system that will add support towards the Rust Programming Language while preventing memory safety bugs.
The organization also created the parts of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) with Rust for 18 months and having the plans that the pipeline is to scale this while covering the more part of the operating system.
What Google is Responding to?
Google also said that the languages like Java and Kotlin are the best options for the development of Android applications. The Android deals with Java language while protecting and covering the very large portion of the Android platform with the help of memory bugs. But it may not work for the lower layer while developing.
However, the codes which are written in C and C++ languages are needed robust isolation that parsing the untrustworthy input. The technique of dealing with this code needs a constrained and unprivileged sandbox that can be expensive and also cause multiple issues like latency and additional memory usage.
Whereas, if we talk about the memory safety bugs in C and C++ is containing 70% more vulnerability and the approach while switching from the memory-safe language that is capable to prevent all these things from happening in the first place.
Google also said that Rust provides the memory safety promise with the help of a combination of compile-time that checks while enforcing the object for lifetime/ownership and also check while ensuring valid memory access.
Summering Up
Since, Google doesn’t rewrite all the existing code that was underlying the operating system and written in C and C++, instead of focusing on the memory-safe language that is used to modify the code that has the higher likelihood value of memory bugs.
Meanwhile, Google is continuously checking the efforts with the Rust that include a proper and complete rewrite of Android Bluetooth Stack, which was started with the updates of Android 11 and it also works as a Rust-based network stack that is an open-source Fuchsia operating system.
