Visual Studio How to use C++ standard library in a kernel mode driver project?

Question

I'm using vs2015 and wdk10, I can use random in an empty project .

#include <random>
std::default_random_engine eng;//works fine .

But when I create an empty kernel mode driver project ,I can't use random in it.

#include <random>
std::default_random_engine eng;//namespace "std" has no member "default_random_engine"

Other standard libraries ,like vector and tuple wouldn't work either , all reminding me that namespace "std" has no member XXX (vector ,tuple ,etc .)

How can I solve this ?

You cannot. You don't have the privilege of using such stuff in kernel mode. — Gaurav Sehgal, Sep 17 '18 at 06:03

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 17 '18 at 07:01

The implementation of the std library requires working exception processing for the code to work correctly. That has stopped a port of the standard library from being performed in kernel.

Other examples of code which does not work in kernel, is

magic statics (thread safe initialization of local variables - requires thread-local-storage, which is not in kernel).
static initialization of objects. In a DLL or EXE, the global data of a program is initialized by the runtime before main is called. That code is not present in the kernel
stack size. A kernel thread is only 12kb of memory, which makes some algorithms choke, causing exceptions.
Memory handling is different in kernel, with memory being allocated with a Tag. That would be lost, or create interfacing issues if you implemented an allocator with a tag.

As mentioned in the comments

RtlRandomEx

produces pseudo random numbers, and is available in kernel.

For cryptographic secure randomness, then this page holds some value.

MS crypto primatives

Visual Studio How to use C++ standard library in a kernel mode driver project?

1 Answers1