Aarno Labs Awarded DARPA Grant to Develop Tools for Translating C to Safe Rust

Addressing the challenge of trusted, low-cost migration from C to Safe Rust for critical software systems

BOSTON, MA / ACCESS Newswire / June 9, 2025 /Aarno Labs, a research and development company focused on promoting high-assurance software via advanced program analysis and formal methods, has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop advanced tools for translating legacy C code into safe, idiomatic Rust. The work is part of DARPA 's newly launched TRACTOR program (Translating All C to Rust), which aims to eliminate memory safety vulnerabilities in critical software systems.

The Aarno-led project, named Tenjin, will build a modular framework that combines source-level refactoring with multi-stage translation driven by comprehensive program understanding. The toolchain leverages Aarno 's mature static and dynamic analysis platforms-CodeHawk and DIODE-to extract deep semantic models from C programs. These models enable the system to produce safe, maintainable Rust output, plus tests to validate the absence of introduced regressions.

"C has been making computers vulnerable since before I was born," said Dr. Benjamin Karel, Principal Investigator at Aarno Labs. "Tenjin is designed to help maintainers of C codebases leave the past behind, producing functionally equivalent but safer Rust code."

Aarno Labs is collaborating with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including Professors Michael Carbin and Martin Rinard, who bring deep expertise in programming languages, formal methods, and machine learning. The resulting tools will be released as open-source software intended to support public and private sector efforts to transition legacy code to memory-safe platforms.

For more information, visit www.aarno-labs.com.

Name: Michael Gordon
Email: info@aarno-labs.com

SOURCE: Aarno Labs, LLC

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