Bringing Rust to the Pixel Baseband

The integration of Rust into the baseband firmware of Pixel 10 series phones is a significant step towards enhancing security by leveraging memory-safe languages. Here's an overview and key points from the project:

Overview

• Objective: Integrate Rust (a memory-safe language) into the modem firmware to replace existing C/C++ code, reducing attack surfaces.

• Implementation:

  • Replaced a DNS response parsing function with Rust.
  • Ensured seamless integration between Rust and existing C/C++ components.

Key Steps

1. Building Core Components:

   • Built core, alloc, and compiler_builtins directly from source, ensuring compatibility with the modem's memory management system.

2. Memory Management:

   • Implemented a custom allocator for Rust’s alloc crate to integrate with existing firmware allocators.

3. Panic Handling:

   • Unified crash handling by integrating Rust panic handlers with the existing C/C++ crash facade via FFI (Foreign Function Interface).

4. Linking and Integration:

   • Extracted object files from the Rust static library using llvm-ar and linked them into the final firmware image.
   • Addressed performance issues

Read the full article at Google Online Security Blog

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