Static and Dynamic Memory Protection using Type-Based Memory Layout in Rust

Hardware supported memory protection is a commonly adopted approach to runtime verification of memory accesses. However, protection is typically coarse grained where trusted drivers and kernel code is given access to unnecessarily large portions of the memory space. This approach implies huge costs to verification, validation and certification of trusted code.In this paper we propose an alternative approach, leveraging on memory safety guarantees of the Rust systems level programming language together with a novel type-based method to statically determine the memory layout of the application. The memory layout information can be used for further static code analysis, proving access pattern properties, and is used as an outset for fine grained hardware supported memory protection.While the proposed approach is novel and breaks with traditional and industrial practice, our results are applicable to existing hardware platforms and holds the potential to provide leap-step improvements to safety and security of embedded devices.