Memory-Safe Until It Isn’t: The Rust Kernel Bug That Broke Linux
The disclosure of CVE-2025-68260 , the first publicly assigned CVE affecting Rust code in the Linux kernel, triggered a disproportionate level of attention compared to its immediate technical impact. Headlines framed it as a symbolic failure: “Rust breaks,” “memory safety promises collapse,” or “Linux’s Rust experiment backfires.” These interpretations obscure what actually happened and, more importantly, what the event teaches about systems programming, concurrency, and language guarantees. This article examines three tightly related topics: What CVE-2025-68260 actually was, technically The goals and constraints of the Rust-for-Linux initiative Why race conditions remain a hard problem even in Rust, especially in kernel code The goal is not to defend Rust, nor to criticize Linux developers, but to clarify where responsibility lies: in invariants, concurrency design, and the unavoidable complexity of kernel-level programming. Background: The Rust-for-Linux Initiative The Linux ker...