Microsoft’s Rust Bet: From Blue Screens to Safer Code

Microsoft has tinkered with Windows security for decades. Now the company is trying to fix it with Rust, and they want everyone else to use it, too.

The problem is simple: C and C++ let you write code that looks fine but crashes spectacularly, or worse, gets hacked. Microsoft’s own kernel has been leaking privilege escalation bugs monthly through Win32k.sys, the part that handles graphics and windows.

During his keynote at RustConf 2025 this week, entitled “From Blue Screens to Orange Crabs: Microsoft’s Rusty Revolution,” Mark…