Not only software giants use the Rust programming language because of the extra security it offers. Even criminals see something in it. This is shown by a new P2P worm that infests Windows and Linux systems.

Earlier this month, Palo Alto discovered a new peer-to-peer (P2P) worm written in the relatively new Rust programming language. The worm targets the open source database application Redis and thrives on both Windows and Linux environments. Palo Alto-based Unit42 found that out of 307,000 publicly visible Redis systems, nearly 1,000 are vulnerable. To do this, the worm uses the critical vulnerability CVE-2022-0543, for which a patch already exists.

Rusty Worm

It’s not so much the size of the P2P worm that sets it apart, but its use of Rust. Rust is a modern and scalable programming language tailored for cloud environments, which partly explains the ability to switch between Linux and Windows.

The worm virus is such a dubious feather in the up and coming Rust cap. Eventually, Microsoft will rewrite Windows code to Rust, Google is doing the same with Android and is also working on a rusty version of Chrome, and Rust has made its way into the Linux kernel as well. Now that criminals are also adopting the language, it seems completely grown-up.