TOtosh·Jun 20, 2026Submission
30 points · Open discussiongeiger-rs
cargo-geiger
Rust2020–2026
geiger-rs / cargo-geiger
cargo-geiger
Detects usage of unsafe Rust in a Rust crate and its dependencies.
13Distinct people
15Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.7KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Detects usage of unsafe Rust in a Rust crate and its dependencies.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year15 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-06-13 17:00:59 UTC to 2026-06-20 14:52:59 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
15 sourcesNo, but you can use cargo-geiger[1] or siderophile[2] for that.
[1]: https://github.com/geiger-rs/cargo-geiger
[2]: https://github.com/trailofbits/siderophile
In Supply chain nightmare: How Rust will be attacked and what we can do to mitigateI love this idea and I hope I get to work on it someday. I've wanted this ever since I was a starry-eyed teenager on IRC listening to Darius Bacon explain his capability-based OS idea, aptly called "Vapor".
I think it could be possible in Rust with a linter, something like https://github.com/geiger-rs/cargo-geiger . The Rust compiler has some unsoundness issues such as https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/84366 . Those would need fixing or linter coverage.
In Rust’s dependencies are starting to worry meYeah, I tried that before resorting to just using `rg`, unfortunately this issue prevents it from working: https://github.com/geiger-rs/cargo-geiger/issues/523
In OpenVMM – A New VMM for Windows and Linux, Written in RustFor this kind of analysis, https://github.com/geiger-rs/cargo-geiger comes in handy.
In OpenVMM – A New VMM for Windows and Linux, Written in RustInstead of looking at the crates themselves, you might want to check your (or others') Rust application with https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger to get a sense of effective prevalence. I also dispute that the presence of unsafe somewhere in the dependency tree is an issue in itself, but that's a different discussion that many more had in other sub-threads.
In Was Rust Worth It?For that, I believe you need to use cargo-geiger[0] and audit the results.
[0] - https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger
In Rosenpass – formally verified post-quantum WireGuardRust has a culture where people don't use `unsafe` unless absolutely necessary. That is generally good enough in my experience.
If you want to go further, you can disable unsafe in a crate by adding #[forbid(unsafe)].
And if you need more control than that, there's probably tooling out there that will help depending on what exactly you need.
https://github.com/rustsec/rustsec/tree/main/cargo-audit
https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger
https://github.com/crev-dev/cargo-crev
In Memory Safe Languages in Android 13Detect usage of unsafe Rust in a Rust crate and its dependencies
4 points · Open discussionPeople do consistently audit unsafe usage. And I would rather have atrocious rust code that's memory safe, than atrocious C/C++ code that comes with a free package of CVEs.
There are tools that explicitly exist for this use case, such as cargo-geiger [0]. There was some drama with a large framework called Actix a while ago due to the maintainer having a bit of a cavalier attitude towards unsafe usage. Etc.
0: https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger
In Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?Interesting paper. Here's one of their key conclusions:
> Our analysis shows that while publicly available Rust libraries rarely use the unsafe keyword (even very popular libraries), most of them are still not Safe Rust, because of unsafe use in dependencies.
I think this might be a misapprehension of safety in Rust by the authors: safety doesn't mean that absence of the `unsafe` keyword in your dependency tree, it means safety by construction through safe wrappers of fundamentally unsafe code.
The Rust standard library is the perfect example of this: it exposes safe interfaces that are built on top of fundamentally unsafe OS primitives and system calls. That doesn't make any code that uses them "unsafe"; it parametrizes the notion of safety on safe abstractions. That's all Rust has ever promised, and it's still significantly better than
Read the rest
the status quo.
Other than that, the paper's other observations are excellent: we should be more aware of the presence of `unsafe` in our dependency trees, and that information should be more readily surfaced by standard tooling. Tools like `cargo geiger`[1] and `siderophile`[2] (FD: my company's tool) bring us a little closer to that.
[1]: https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger
[2]: https://github.com/trailofbits/siderophile
There exist unofficial tools for counting the number of unsafe blocks in a project: https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger
However a sufficiently determined evil crate can use soundness holes (like fake-static) or macros (like plutonium) to misbehave without visible unsafe.
In The RustonomiconRelated to what you are looking for is https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger which analyzes the dependency tree for unsafe but afaik it doesn't actually show each individual block.
The readme is quite good.
In An iOS zero-click radio proximity exploit odysseycargo-geiger isn't foolproof, there are well-known false negatives: https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger/issues/101
In Why Not Rust?That's if you use 'Safe Rust', then the safety guarantees hold true. However, the risks increase as soon as you start using unsafe{} or import a crate that also has unsafe{} code which is why I like using cargo-geiger on my projects to see the unsafe{} uses in my code and dependencies [0]. Use unsafe{} at your own risk. [1]
[0] https://github.com/rust-secure-code/cargo-geiger
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03296
In Microsoft: Rust Is the Industry’s ‘Best Chance’ at Safe Systems Programming