Senior Microsoft exec says Windows 11 kernel will soon be booting with Rust inside

2023/04/28

At the recently held BlueHat IL 2023 conference, David Weston, Vice President, Enterprise and OS Security at Microsoft, took to the stage to discuss the evolution of Windows security, provide insight into the latest advances and the road ahead.

During the presentation, Weston discussed the progress Microsoft has been making with Rust as part of the Windows kernel. The tech giant has been interested in this language for several reasons and one of those happens to center around memory safety and security that Rust offers. Weston added that Windows 11 will soon be booting with Rust in the kernel and it could be happening really soon. In fact, it could potentially happen within just a few weeks from now.

Microsofts David Weston at BlueHat IL talking about Rust in Windows — Benefits for using Rust over C++

He stated:

So you’ll actually have Windows booting with Rust in the kernel in probably the next several weeks or months, which is really cool. Umm basic goal here was to convert some of these internal C++ data types into their Rust equivalents.

Weston added that 36 thousand lines of code have been added so far and there are also no major performance regressions in tested scenarios. The Win32k’s GDI (graphics driver interface) port to Rust was able to pass all tests when booting on Windows.