Overview
- Pixel 10 phones are the first to ship with a modem that parses DNS using Rust, according to Google.
- Processing untrusted DNS packets in a memory-safe language blocks many bugs that attackers use to corrupt memory.
- Google adapted the hickory-proto DNS library to a no_std setup so it could run inside the baseband and link with existing C and C++ code.
- The Rust components increased the modem firmware by about 371 KB, which Google says is acceptable for Pixel devices but may strain smaller systems.
- Testing exposed a link-time swap of optimized functions that hurt power and speed, and Google says it corrected the issue before release.