Memory-safe languages and security by design: Key insights, lessons learned

The report synthesizes Google’s lessons on achieving memory safety at scale, advocating security by design through broad adoption of memory-safe languages and safe-by-default coding that prohibits unsafe constructs except by explicit exception. It highlights limitations of retrofitting C++ for rigorous memory safety, notes that garbage-collected languages and Rust reduce common memory flaws, and outlines tradeoffs of sandboxing and performance. The authors stress that bug finding alone is insufficient without fixes and deployment, urging a long-term industry shift toward memory-safe ecosystems while improving existing C/C++ codebases by eliminating vulnerability-prone patterns.