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Android Phones Are Now More Secure With Rust

(Image Credit Google)
Android experiences regular security flaw discoveries (and subsequent patching), just like any other widely used software. Thankfully, a change in programming languages has led to a decrease in one kind of security issue. This week, Google explained in a blog post on its security blog that memory safety vulnerabilities, in which buffer overflows and other similar code issues could let other software evade sandboxes and cause issues, are decreasing in Android phones. "We see that the number of memory safety vulnerabilities has decreased significantly over the past few years/releases," the company stated. The annual number of memory safety vulnerabilities decreased from 223 to 85 between 2019 and 2022. Why, then, have security issues decreased? Although Google was quick to point out that "correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation," the decision to write the majority of Android's more recent code in the Rust programming language rather than in C or C++ is most likely to be to blame. Rust strictly enforces memory safety, greatly lowering the likelihood of memory-related security issues. android In the blog post, Google stated, "From 2019 to 2022, it decreased from 76% to 35% of Android's overall vulnerabilities. It won't be until 2022 that memory safety flaws make up less than half of Android's vulnerabilities. Although Rust still doesn't make up the majority of the new code added each year, its share is steadily rising. Google also stated that the Rust code for Android has not yet been found to contain any security flaws. Outside of memory safety issues, there are still a lot of other potential security issues, but it appears that switching to Rust has made Android phones and tablets safer. It's definitely cause for celebration.

By Raulf Hernes

If you ask me raulf means ALL ABOUT TECH!!

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