Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
Posted by Jeff Vander Stoep, Android Last year, we wrote about why a memory safety strategy that focuses on vulnerability prevention in new code quickly yields durable and compounding gains.
Posted by Jeff Vander Stoep, Android Last year, we wrote about why a memory safety strategy that focuses on vulnerability prevention in new code quickly yields durable and compounding gains. This year we look at how this approach isn’t just fixing things, but helping us move faster . This data covers first-party and third-party (open source) code changes to the Android platform across C, C++, Java, Kotlin, and Rust. This post is published a couple of months before the end of 2025, but Android’s industry-standard 90-day patch window means that these results are very likely close to final.
Our first rust memory safety vulnerability...almost: We'll analyze a near-miss memory safety bug in unsafe Rust: how it happened, how it was mitigated, and steps we're taking to prevent recurrence.
In this post, we dig into the data behind this shift and also cover: How we’re expanding our reach: We're pushing to make secure code the default across our entire software stack. We have updates on Rust adoption in first-party apps, the Linux kernel, and firmware.
What changed
With Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review , the safer path is now also the faster one.
Who is affected
It’s also a good chance to answer the question “if Rust can have memory safety issues, why bother at all?” Building Better Software, Faster Developing an operating system r
Why this matters
But the biggest surprise was Rust's impact on software delivery.
The technical picture
Our first rust memory safety vulnerability...almost: We'll analyze a near-miss memory safety bug in unsafe Rust: how it happened, how it was mitigated, and steps we're taking to prevent recurrence.
How organizations are responding
In this post, we dig into the data behind this shift and also cover: How we’re expanding our reach: We're pushing to make secure code the default across our entire software stack.
We have updates on Rust adoption in first-party apps, the Linux kernel, and firmware.
What to watch next
Watch for revised fixed-version guidance and confirmation that mitigations are holding in affected environments.
What remains unknown
The available reporting does not establish whether the issue is being actively exploited in the wild.
The available reporting does not establish who is behind the activity, if an attacker is involved.