High Assurance Rust
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Novice: Systems Security
Introduction
Software Assurance
Rust Zero-Crash Course
Understanding Memory Safety and Exploitation
1. Software Perspective: CPU to Process
2. Assurance Perspective: Stack Safety
3. Attacker's Perspective: Breaking Safety (1/2)
4. Attacker's Perspective: Unifying Theory (2/2)
5. Debugging DIY Secret Obfuscation
6. Stack Exploitation
7. Software Perspective: Heap (1/2)
8. Software Perspective: Heap (2/2)
9. Heap Exploitation
10. Rust's Memory Safety Guarantees (1/2)
11. Rust's Memory Safety Guarantees (2/2)
12. Language-agnostic Mitigations
13. Case Study: Real-world Rust CVEs
14. Challenge: Vulnerability Research
Advanced Beginner: Core Project
Binary Search Tree (BST) Basics
1. Core BST Operations in Python
2. Problems Translating to Rust
3. The Importance of Balance
4. TODO
5. Challenge: TODO
Building an Arena Allocator
1. Let's Talk Allocators
2. A Stack-Only Arena
3. Index-based Data Structures
4. TODO
5. Challenge: TODO
A Self-balancing BST
1. Interface-relevant Traits
2. Scapegoat Trees
3. Insert
4. Remove
5. Find
6. Challenge: TODO
Digital Twin Testing
1. Basic QEMU Internals
2. How Semi-hosting Works
3. CLI REPL Harness
4. Limitations
5. TODO
6. Challenge: TODO
Building Maps and Sets
1. TODO
2. Challenge: TODO
Implementing Iterators
1. TODO
2. Challenge: TODO
Competent: Validation and Deployment
Static Verification
1. An Introduction to 1st Order Logic
2. Proving Absence of Panics
3. Deductively Verifying our Arena Allocator
4. Model Checking for unsafe Code
5. TODO
6. Challenge: Prove a Sorting Algorithm
Dynamic Testing
1. Introduction to Coverage-Guided Fuzzing
2. Building a Differential Fuzzing Harness
3. Using Miri to Detect Undefined Behavior
4. Benchmarking and Optimization
5. TODO
6. Challenge: Bug-hunting with Fuzzers
Operational Deployment
1. Understanding unsafe (1/3)
2. Understanding unsafe (2/3)
3. Understanding unsafe (3/3)
4. CFFI 101
5. C99 Interoperability
6. Python3 Interoperability
7. Runtime Balance Reconfiguration
8. TODO
9. Challenge: TODO
Maximizing Assurance
1. Rust Security Research
2. Rust's Limitations
3. Best Practices Beyond Rust
4. TODO
5. Challenge: TODO
Conclusion
Review
1. Key Concepts
2. Key Blue-Team Skills
3. Key Red-Team Skills
Appendix
1. Setup: Using our Docker Container
2. Inventory: Tools of the Trade
3. Inventory: Recommended Reading
4. Inventory: Additional Resources
5. Fundamentals: Stream Ciphers
6. Fundamentals: Type Systems
7. Fundamentals: Component-Based Design
8. Fundamentals: Memory Hierarchy
9. Fundamentals: Dynamic Linking
10. Theory: Inter-procedural CFGs
11. Misc: Size Optimization
12. Misc: The Typestate Pattern
13. Misc: C++ Interoperability
14. Misc: Compile-time Metaprogramming

Changelog

Note: This book is a work in progress, and its contents (current or future) are subject to change. If you've found an error, please get in touch.

v0.4.2-alpha:
- Internal tools update (metrics, linter)
- Landing/README.md badges with computed page and diagram counts
- Updated EPUB download
- Updated mentions of Ferrocene and FLS in light of respective open-source releases (yay!)
v0.4.1-alpha:
- New section: 4.2 Assurance Perspective: Stack Safety
- New section: 16.10 Theory: Inter-procedural CFGs
- Revisions to 4.0, 4.1, and 4.4.
- Many new and revised 4.X diagrams.
v0.4.0-alpha:
- New section: 4.1. Software Perspective: CPU to Stack
- New section: 4.3. Attacker's Perspective: Breaking Safety (1/2)
- New section: 4.4. Attacker's Perspective: Unifying Theory (2/2)
v0.3.2:
- Rust Foundation sponsorship via the 2022 Project Grants Program!
- New diagrams and discussion in 1.1, 2.10.
- New asides in 2.2 and 2.7.
- CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md added.
- EPUB download now includes a SHA-3-256 hash and timestamp.
v0.3.1:
- Community Contributors list started, CONTRIBUTING.md added.
- Several fixes and improvements based on community feedback.
- Shout-out to jam1garner for a thorough review and deep technical insights.
- Add EPUB download.
v0.3.0:
- Hello, world! :)
- Public release of initial content (Chapters 1, 2, 3, and most of Appendix).
v0.0.0:
- Open-source scapegoat library demonstrates that this book's core project is viable.
- Maximizes Rust's major strengths: memory safety and bare metal portability.

Dates intentionally omitted to keep us focused on quality, not speed. Except for the code - that's pretty fast (stack-stored arena, no recursion).