High Assurance Rust
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Engage with this Book!
Sponsor Call for Proposals (CFP)
Download
Changelog
License
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

About the Team

Core Team

Tiemoko Ballo, Author (tiemoko.com)

Tiemoko is a Senior Cybersecurity Researcher. His experience spans advanced tooling development at a US Department of Defense laboratory, publication at peer-reviewed academic conferences, and incident response at a Fortune 100 enterprise. He received his Masters degree in Information Security from Carnegie Mellon University.

Moumine Ballo, Technical Editor (LinkedIn)

Moumine is a Senior Staff Software Engineer. He's worked on a cutting-edge mobile GPU, and written graphics engines for both AAA games on resource-constrained consoles and autonomous vehicle simulation. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Warsaw University of Technology.

Alex James, Technical Editor (buildbreak.net)

Alex is a Security Software Engineer. He works on web-scale secure architecture and cloud infrastructure, designing and implementing distributed security systems that serve over 300 million daily active users. He received his Masters degree in Information Security from Carnegie Mellon University.

Community Contributors

Huge thank you to everyone making this book better¹! Listed alphabetically:

¹

Contributions are welcome and appreciated. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.