Revisiting the Challenges of Input Parsing for Robust and Secure Software

A wide variety of programs exchange data in our internet-connected world and one of the perpetual security challenges is the ingestion of data produced by communication partners. The insufficient robustness in parsing and processing of input data by programs still leads to security incidents. This paper revisits and explores the problem of parsing input data, with a consideration of the programming language Rust. By its novel combination of features, Rust discourages certain programming errors which are the cause of common security issues. Consequently, this motivates its adoption in cases where a secure and robust implementation is required. Our exploration in this work suggests that Rust is a worthwhile programming language choice for implementation of input data parsing and processing.