Rust now available for real-time operating system and hypervisor PikeOS

Together with PikeOS (version 5.1.3), which is security-certified against Common Criteria at the EAL 5+ level, Rust forms a cyber-secure and functionally safe foundation for embedded applications that is unprecedented in the safe-and-secure platform and embedded system landscape. Areas of application for the combination of both technologies can be found wherever no compromises can be made in system protection, such as in secure gateways and in applications that have to meet the highest functional safety requirements. The target markets include medical technology, avionics, automotive, rail and industry.

PikeOS is also pre-certified against many industry software safety standards such as DO-178C for avionics, EN 50128 and EN 50657 for rail, ISO 26262 for automotive, EN 61508 for industrial and IEC 62304 for medical. The necessary focus on the combination of safety and security takes into account the realization that functional safety is nowadays increasingly also a question of security.

Rust is characterised, amongst other things, by strong data type security and a preventive security concept that makes it easier for programmers to detect and avoid safety-critical errors at the development stage. Consequently, this helps to reduce vulnerabilities in applications and thus protect against cyber attacks. A major strength of Rust, which is repeatedly demonstrated in practice, is its much lower susceptibility to buffer overflows compared to other programming languages. This eliminates a major attack vector that hackers exploit to force privilege escalation and thus seize a system.

"Supporting Rust for PikeOS was a logical step for us, because we take every possible step to make our operating system even more secure. I am therefore very happy that we have now succeeded in taking this step and that we can offer our customers a solution that not only they, but also their customers can rely on," said Dr. Oliver Kühlert, Head of Innovation Lab at SYSGO.