MetaSafe: Compiling for Protecting Smart Pointer Metadata to Ensure Safe Rust Integrity

Watch a conference presentation from USENIX Security '24 exploring MetaSafe, a novel mechanism for protecting smart pointer metadata in Rust programming language. Learn how researchers from Seoul National University and UNIST address memory safety vulnerabilities in safe Rust by implementing a gated memory region that restricts metadata access to predefined management functions. Discover how this approach prevents potential attacks that could compromise Rust's memory safety checks, while only adding minimal performance overhead of 3.5% on web browser benchmarks. Understand the challenges of memory safety in both safe and unsafe Rust, and see how MetaSafe extends the official Rust compiler to provide enhanced protection for smart pointer metadata.