I don't know if there's any hardware that will never rust. Go striper fishing off the beach at Pacifica in the summer time for a few trips and most everything winds up getting rusty :) Steel hardware is good though.

A good way I've found to keep it from spreading / getting worse is to spray WD-40 on everything, then wipe clean with paper towels. Then empty out your tackle box, pull the dividers, and spray that all down with WD-40 as well