Modern Windows kernel drivers, traditionally written in C, are prone to memory-safety bugs that could lead to security exploits and system instability. This paper evaluates the use of the Rust programming language for Windows driver development, by building safe abstractions around native kernel structures and APIs. A ProcMon-like driver has been developed to capture filesystem events and send them to user-mode components. We document the complete build and debug workflow, analyze crash diagnostics across Rust and C implementations, and evaluate runtime overhead through micro-benchmarks.

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Rust in the Kernel: A Practical Evaluation on Windows

  • Cătălin Cot,
  • Radu Portase,
  • Adrian Coleşa

摘要

Modern Windows kernel drivers, traditionally written in C, are prone to memory-safety bugs that could lead to security exploits and system instability. This paper evaluates the use of the Rust programming language for Windows driver development, by building safe abstractions around native kernel structures and APIs. A ProcMon-like driver has been developed to capture filesystem events and send them to user-mode components. We document the complete build and debug workflow, analyze crash diagnostics across Rust and C implementations, and evaluate runtime overhead through micro-benchmarks.