Research on Rust for Security

A special topics class (CSE 5349) taught by Mike Bond in Spring 2026

The C programming language's lack of memory safety has led to countless vulnerabilities and bugs, costing trillions of dollars and imperiling security and human well-being. There is growing support among researchers, practitioners, and governments for migrating safety- and security-critical system software from C to memory-safe languages, with Rust as the exemplar owing to its unique combination of safety and bare-metal performance.

In this class, students will learn the Rust programming language and explore research on how to translate C to Rust and how to provide higher-level security guarantees for Rust code. Activities will include reading, discussing, and critiquing papers and completing a project.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with C (or C++ or Rust) is strongly recommended because it helps with learning and understanding Rust.

Questions? Contact mikebond@cse.ohio-state.edu.