This is the government's strongest stance yet on software security, which puts manufacturers on notice: fix dangerous coding practices or risk being labeled as negligent.
Using smart pointers doesn’t eliminate the memory safety issue, it merely addresses one aspect of it. Even with smart pointers, nothing is preventing you from passing references and using them after they’re freed.
I get what you’re saying, but I think the issue with optional memory safety features is that it’s hard to be sure you’re using it in all the places and hard to maintain that when someone can add a new allocation in the future, etc. It’s certainly doable, and maybe some static analysis tools out there can prove it’s all okay.
Whereas with Rust, it’s built from the ground up to prove exactly that, plus other things like no memory being shared between threads by accident etc. Rust makes it difficult and obvious to do the wrong thing, rather than that being the default.
Software manufacturers should build products in a manner that systematically prevents the introduction of memory safety vulnerabilities, such as by using a memory safe language or hardware capabilities that prevent memory safety vulnerabilities. Additionally, software manufacturers should publish a memory safety roadmap by January 1, 2026.
My interpretation is that smart pointers are allowed, as long it’s systematically enforced. Switching to a memory safe language is just one example.
Seems excessive to convert everything to rust when you can use std::shared_ptr and std::weak_ptr to eliminate the memory safety issue?
Using smart pointers doesn’t eliminate the memory safety issue, it merely addresses one aspect of it. Even with smart pointers, nothing is preventing you from passing references and using them after they’re freed.
To be fair, it’s entirely possible to make the same and very similar mistakes in Rust, too.
I’m fairly sure use after free isn’t possible unless you explicitly use unsafe code right?
It’s compiler enforced is the point.
I get what you’re saying, but I think the issue with optional memory safety features is that it’s hard to be sure you’re using it in all the places and hard to maintain that when someone can add a new allocation in the future, etc. It’s certainly doable, and maybe some static analysis tools out there can prove it’s all okay.
Whereas with Rust, it’s built from the ground up to prove exactly that, plus other things like no memory being shared between threads by accident etc. Rust makes it difficult and obvious to do the wrong thing, rather than that being the default.
I wonder how many issues rewriting everything in another language will create?
From the original document:
My interpretation is that smart pointers are allowed, as long it’s systematically enforced. Switching to a memory safe language is just one example.