Rust Security Review

This skill ensures all Rust code follows security best practices, leveraging the language's type safety while identifying potential logic-level vulnerabilities.

When to Activate

• •Implementing authentication or authorization (JWT, session cookies)
• •Handling user input via serde or public API endpoints
• •Working with secrets, credentials, or .env files
• •Interacting with databases using sqlx.
• •Implementing payment features or handling sensitive PII
• •Integrating third-party crates or APIs

Security Checklist

1. Secrets Management

❌ NEVER Do This

// Hardcoded secret - will be compiled into the binary
const API_KEY: &str = "sk-proj-xxxxx"; 

✅ ALWAYS Do This

Use dotenvy for loading and envy for type-safe deserialization. Use the secrecy crate to prevent accidental logging.

use serde::Deserialize;
use secrecy::{Secret, ExposeSecret};

#[derive(Deserialize)]
struct Config {
    database_url: Secret<String>,
    api_key: Secret<String>,
}

fn main() {
    dotenvy::dotenv().ok();
    let config = envy::from_env::<Config>().expect("Missing env vars");
    
    // Access safely: config.api_key.expose_secret()
}

Verification Steps

• • No hardcoded keys in source code or Cargo.toml.
• • .env added to .gitignore.
• • Sensitive strings wrapped in secrecy::Secret.
• • CI/CD secrets injected via environment, not files.

2. Input Validation

Validate at the Serialization Boundary

Use the validator crate alongside serde to enforce business logic on input.

use serde::Deserialize;
use validator::Validate;

#[derive(Deserialize, Validate)]
struct SignupRequest {
    #[validate(email)]
    email: String,
    #[validate(length(min = 8))]
    password: String,
    #[validate(range(min = 18, max = 120))]
    age: u16,
}

// In an Axum handler
async fn register(axum::Json(payload): axum::Json<SignupRequest>) -> impl IntoResponse {
    if let Err(e) = payload.validate() {
        return (StatusCode::BAD_REQUEST, format!("Validation error: {}", e));
    }
    // Proceed...
}

Verification Steps

• • All public structs implement Validate.
• • String length limits enforced (prevent memory exhaustion/ReDoS).
• • Numeric bounds checked (prevent overflow/logic errors).
• • Whitelist validation for enums and fixed strings.

3. SQL Injection Prevention

❌ NEVER Construct SQL with String Formatting

// DANGEROUS: SQL Injection vulnerability
let query = format!("SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = '{}'", user_email);

✅ ALWAYS Use Parameterized Queries

sqlx provides compile-time checked queries that are inherently safe.

// Safe: Parameters are bound via the database protocol
let user = sqlx::query!(
    "SELECT id, name FROM users WHERE email = $1",
    user_email
)
.fetch_optional(&pool)
.await?;

Verification Steps

• • No format! or concat! used to build SQL strings.
• • sqlx::query! or sqlx::query_as! macros used for compile-time safety.
• • Database user has minimal required permissions.

4. Authentication & Authorization

Cookie Security

use axum_extra::extract::cookie::{Cookie, SameSite};

// Set secure, httpOnly cookies
let cookie = Cookie::build(("session", token))
    .path("/")
    .http_only(true)
    .secure(true)
    .same_site(SameSite::Strict)
    .finish();

Password Hashing

use argon2::{
    password_hash::{rand_core::OsRng, PasswordHasher, SaltString},
    Argon2
};

// Use Argon2id for hashing
let salt = SaltString::generate(&mut OsRng);
let password_hash = Argon2::default()
    .hash_password(password.as_bytes(), &salt)?
    .to_string();

Verification Steps

• • Passwords hashed with Argon2id or scrypt.
• • Cookies are HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Strict/Lax.
• • Authorization checks performed at the handler level.
• • JWTs (if used) have short expiration and validated signatures.

5. XSS Prevention

Sanitize User-Provided HTML

Use ammonia to clean any HTML intended for rendering.

let unsafe_html = "<img src=x onerror=alert(1)><b>Hello</b>";
let clean_html = ammonia::clean(unsafe_html);
// Result: "<b>Hello</b>"

Verification Steps

• • User-provided strings sanitized before being rendered as HTML.
• • Content Security Policy (CSP) headers implemented.
• • Templates (Tera/Askama) set to auto-escape by default.

6. Rate Limiting

API Throttling

Use tower-governor (for Axum) or governor to prevent brute force.

let governor_conf = Box::new(
    GovernorConfigBuilder::default()
        .per_second(2)
        .burst_size(5)
        .finish()
        .unwrap(),
);

let app = Router::new()
    .route("/api/login", post(login))
    .layer(GovernorLayer { config: &governor_conf });

Verification Steps

• • Rate limiting applied to all auth/sensitive endpoints.
• • Stricter limits on heavy database queries.

7. Blockchain (Solana/Anchor)

Arithmetic Safety

// ❌ WRONG: Potential overflow
let total = a + b;

// ✅ CORRECT: Checked math
let total = a.checked_add(b).ok_or(error!(ErrorCode::Overflow))?;

Signer and Ownership Checks

// Anchor enforces this via attributes
#[derive(Accounts)]
pub struct UpdateConfig<'info> {
    #[account(mut, has_one = admin)]
    pub config: Account<'info, GlobalConfig>,
    pub admin: Signer<'info>, // Must sign the transaction
}

Verification Steps

• • All arithmetic uses checked_, saturating_, or safe_ methods.
• • Signer checks verified for all authority accounts.
• • Account ownership and discriminators verified.

8. Logging and Errors

❌ NEVER Log PII or Secrets

// DANGEROUS: Logs the password
error!("Failed login for {} with password {}", email, password);

✅ ALWAYS Redact Sensitive Info

error!("Failed login attempt for email: {}", email);
// Detailed error only in internal tracing spans

Verification Steps

• • No PII (emails, names, tokens) in standard logs.
• • Generic error messages returned to the user (no stack traces).
• • Internal errors logged with enough context for debugging.

9. Dependency Security

Audit Crates

# Check for vulnerabilities in dependencies
cargo audit

# Deny crates with specific licenses or known issues
cargo deny check

Verification Steps

• • Cargo.lock is committed to Git.
• • cargo audit runs in CI/CD.
• • Minimal use of unsafe code; all unsafe blocks reviewed.

Pre-Deployment Checklist

• • Environment: No .env files in production; use platform secrets.
• • Audit: cargo audit passed with zero vulnerabilities.
• • Overflows: Compiled with overflow checks (enabled by default in dev, use checked_ math for prod).
• • Headers: HSTS, CSP, and X-Frame-Options configured.
• • Database: RLS (if using Postgres) or minimal user roles set.
• • Errors: User-facing errors are generic; logs are sanitized.

Remember: In Rust, memory safety is guaranteed, but logic safety is your responsibility. Always assume user input is malicious and that environment variables are missing.