ExpressVPN, one of the most popular options available, just received a major speed boost thanks to Rust.

The company revamped Lightway, its proprietary VPN protocol, rewriting it in Rust. Rust has been gaining in popularity, thanks to its performance, memory safety, and other advanced features that older languages sometimes lack. As a result, Rust was a natural choice for rewriting Lightway.

Since its inception, Lightway has been specifically designed and built to suit the needs of modern users—delivering a speedy, secure, and more reliable VPN experience. ExpressVPN has now reimplemented Lightway in Rust, a more modern coding language that prioritizes performance and security. Through this overhaul, ExpressVPN is laying the foundation for a simpler, yet more robust solution with Lightway—ready for the future of VPN connectivity.

The company touts the benefits Rust brings.

Moving Lightway to Rust brings three key advantages over the original C implementation. Firstly, the protocol is now inherently more secure thanks to Rust’s built-in memory safety, eliminating common vulnerabilities and attack vectors in C. Furthermore, Rust allows simpler more expressive code that enables strong performance capabilities and greater efficiencies. It also supports safer multicore-processing—meaning better performance, more battery life, and stronger protection.

“At ExpressVPN, we innovate to solve the challenges of tomorrow. Upgrading Lightway from its previous C code to Rust was a strategic and straightforward decision to enhance performance, and security while ensuring longevity. With Rust widely recognized as the high-performing, secure, and reliable language, it was a natural choice for evolving Lightway,” said Pete Membrey, Chief Research Officer at ExpressVPN.

The company also commissioned two independent audits of Lightway’s code so users can be confident in the security it provides. The company tapped cybersecurity firms Cure53 and Praetorian.

The results from both groups were consistently positive, with Praetorian uncovering only two low-risk findings and Cure53 reporting five discoveries—of which four were classified as miscellaneous findings with low exploitation potential. All findings have been addressed by ExpressVPN and validated again by both expert auditors.

“Investing in dual audits from two independent firms was an important decision we made to gain diverse expert perspectives on Lightway’s new code base. That is why I am happy to share the consistently positive findings across both audits—validating Lightway’s robust security design and implementation,” said Aaron Engel, Chief Information Security Officer at ExpressVPN.

ExpressVPN’s adoption of Rust underscores the momentum the language is gaining, and the benefits it provides.