Automatic C to Rust translation technology provides accuracy beyond AI

As the C language, which forms the basis of critical global software like operating systems, faces security limitations, KAIST’s research team is pioneering core original technology research for the accurate automatic conversion to Rust to replace it. By proving the mathematical correctness of the conversion, a limitation of existing artificial intelligence (LLM) methods, and solving C language security issues through automatic conversion to Rust, they presented a new direction and vision for future software security research.

The paper by Professor Sukyoung Ryu’s research team from the School of Computing was published in the November issue of Communications of the ACM and was selected as the cover story.

The C language has been widely used in the industry since the 1970s, but its structural limitations have continuously caused severe bugs and security vulnerabilities. Rust, on the other hand, is a secure programming language developed since 2015, used in the development of operating systems and web browsers, and has the characteristic of being able to detect and prevent bugs before program execution.

The U.S. White House recommended discontinuing the use of C language in a technology report released in February 2024, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) also explicitly stated that Rust is the core alternative for resolving C language security issues by promoting a project to develop technology for the automatic conversion of C code to Rust.

Professor Ryu’s research team proactively raised the issues of C language safety and the importance of automatic conversion even before these movements began in earnest, and they have continuously developed core related technologies.

In May 2023, the research team presented the Mutex conversion technology (necessary for program synchronization) at ICSE (International Conference on Software Eng). In June 2024, they presented the Output Parameter conversion technology (used for result delivery) at PLDI (Programming Language Design and Implementation), and in October of the same year, they presented the Union conversion technology (for storing diverse data together) at ASE (Automated Software Eng).

Dr. Jaemin Hong stated, “The conversion technology we developed is an original technology based on programming language theory, and its biggest strength is that we can logically prove the ‘correctness’ of the conversion.” He added, “While most research relies on large language models (LLMs), our technology can mathematically guarantee the correctness of the conversion.”

Dr. Hong is scheduled to be appointed as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at UNIST starting in March 2025.

In addition, Professor Ryu’s research team has four papers, including C→Rust conversion technology, accepted for presentation at ASE 2025 held in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 16–20.

These papers, in addition to automatic conversion technology, cover various cutting-edge software engineering fields. They include: technology to verify whether quantum computer programs operate correctly, “WEST” technology that automatically checks the correctness of WebAssembly programs (technology for fast and efficient program execution on the web) and creates tests for them, and technology that automatically simplifies complex WebAssembly code to quickly find errors. Among these, the WEST paper received the Distinguished Paper Award.