Why is the white house urging developers to use memory-safe languages like rust to reduce bugs?

Working primarily with Python and JavaScript, I hadn’t had to worry much about low-level memory issues. Yet recently I encountered why memory safety is becoming such a priority and what it means for developers across all languages.

This blog is written by Jeremy Rivera at KushoAI. We're building the fastest way to test your APIs. It's completely free and you can sign up here.

The White House issued a call for software developers and technology companies to embrace memory-safe programming languages, like Rust, as part of a broad strategy to secure the digital ecosystem. In a recent report titled “Back to the Building Blocks: A Path Toward Secure and Measurable Software,” the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) highlighted memory safety vulnerabilities as a persistent but preventable root cause of many of the most devastating cyber incidents over the past few decades. From infamous exploits like the Heartbleed vulnerability to more recent events like the Blastpass exploit in 2023, memory-related flaws have proven to be a consistent security risk that affects everyone from individual users to national institutions.

This report, was aimed at engineers and technical leaders, outlining how the adoption of memory-safe languages (such as Rust) can significantly reduce the attack surface, potentially reducing entire classes of vulnerabilities. But what exactly does it mean for a language to be “memory safe,” and why has the US Government made this recommendation?

Understanding Memory Safety

Memory safety refers to the ability of a language to prevent common programming errors that can lead to security vulnerabilities. Many programming languages—especially those historically popular for system-level programming like C and C++—are not memory safe. They allow developers to access memory directly and can make it easy to accidentally overwrite critical data or execute code from unintended locations. Such vulnerabilities open up systems to a host of attacks, like buffer overflows and memory leaks, which users with malicious intent will often exploit to gain unauthorized access, escalate privileges, or crash systems.

Memory-safe languages, typically, prevent these issues by design. Languages like Rust and, to a lesser extent, Java, Go, and Swift, were designed to prevent unsafe memory access. Rust, in particular, has been gaining traction because its unique approach to memory management allows high-performance and low-level programming without the pitfalls of the C family of languages. Rust enforces memory safety through strict compile-time checks, removing the possibility of buffer overflows, use-after-free bugs, and null pointer dereferencing, all which are common culprits in security vulnerabilities.

Why Memory Safety Matters Now

The White House’s push for memory safety is rooted in the recognition that the stakes for software vulnerabilities have never been higher. Digital systems are now deeply embedded in national infrastructure, from healthcare to finance to national security. As cyber threats evolve in scale and sophistication, even a single memory safety flaw can lead to widespread disruptions and damages.

For us engineers and cybersecurity professionals, memory safety has tangible benefits beyond security. By enforcing stricter memory access rules at the language level, memory-safe languages reduce the number of runtime errors and bugs in production environments. This can lead to fewer critical bugs crawling into production, improving overall software quality and reducing the time spent on debugging and patching. Rust is increasingly being used in projects that prioritize both performance and safety, from web browsers like Firefox to components of major operating systems like Windows and Linux.

Shifting Responsibility for Cybersecurity

One of the most notable points in the ONCD report is a shift in responsibility for cybersecurity from individual users and small businesses to technology creators and large organizations. Instead of leaving end-users and small enterprises to bear the burden of cybersecurity, the report calls on the actual developers and larger tech companies to integrate security at the design and development stages. 

Moving Forward with Memory-Safe Languages

The White House’s recommendation signals a strong support for memory safety as a foundational principle in software development. For development and testing teams, this translates to a call to embrace languages that make secure programming practices the default. The push toward memory safety also aligns with broader “secure by design” principles, where security is considered at inception, and then at every other stage of development.

As the industry increasingly adopts memory-safe languages, now is an ideal time for software engineers, quality assurance teams, and software development engineers in test (SDETs) to consider using these languages into their applications and systems. While transitioning to another language requires effort and may involve overcoming initial learning curves, the long-term security and quality benefits make it an investment worth considering. For software teams, memory-safe language use is not just about mitigating risks; it’s about building a more secure, resilient, and trustworthy systems, leading to improved performance and safer outcomes.

This blog is written by Jeremy Rivera at KushoAI. We're building an AI agent that tests your APIs for you. Bring in API information and watch KushoAI turn it into fully functional and exhaustive test suites in minutes.