Data

Tools

Indexes

Applications

Experiments

Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

https://github.com/orangecms/muen

An x86/64 Separation Kernel for High Assurance
https://github.com/orangecms/muen

Last synced: 5 months ago
JSON representation

An x86/64 Separation Kernel for High Assurance

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

          
The Muen Separation Kernel

==========================



The Muen Separation Kernel is the world's first Open Source microkernel that

has been formally proven to contain no runtime errors at the source code level.

It is developed in Switzerland by the Institute for Networked Solutions (INS)

at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (HSR). Muen was designed

specifically to meet the challenging requirements of high-assurance systems on

the Intel x86/64 platform. To ensure Muen is suitable for highly critical

systems and advanced national security platforms, HSR closely cooperates with

the high-security specialist secunet Security Networks AG in Germany.



image:example.svg[Example Architecture, width=70%]



A Separation Kernel (SK) is a specialized microkernel that provides an

execution environment for components that exclusively communicate according to

a given security policy and are otherwise strictly isolated from each other.

The covert channel problem, largely ignored by other platforms, is addressed

explicitly by these kernels. SKs are generally more static and smaller than

dynamic microkernels, which minimizes the possibility of kernel failure,

enables the application of formal verification techniques and the mitigation of

covert channels.



Muen uses Intel's hardware-assisted virtualization technology VT-x as core

mechanism to separate components. The kernel executes in VMX root mode, while

user components, so called 'subjects', run in VMX non-root mode. Hardware

passthrough is realized using Intel's VT-d DMA and interrupt remapping

technology. This enables the secure assignment of PCI devices to subjects.



NOTE: Muen is under active development and verification of kernel properties is

      ongoing.



Features

--------



Kernel

~~~~~~

The following list outlines the most-prominent features of the Muen kernel:



* Minimal SK for the Intel x86/64 architecture written in SPARK 2014

* Full availability of source code and documentation

* Proof of absence of runtime errors

* Multicore support

* Nested paging (EPT) and memory typing (PAT)

* Fixed cyclic scheduling using Intel VMX preemption timer

* Static assignment of resources according to system policy

* PCI device passthrough using Intel VT-d (DMAR and IR)

* Support for Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI)

* Minimal Zero-Footprint Run-Time (RTS)

* Event mechanism

* Shared memory channels for inter-subject communication

* Support for 64-bit native and 32/64-bit VM subjects

  - Native 64-bit Ada subjects

  - Native 64-bit SPARK 2014 subjects

  - Linux 32/64-bit VMs

  - Genode x86_64 base-hw system <>

  - Windows 32-bit VMs



Muen supports the hardware-accelerated virtualization of Microsoft Windows

through the use of a fully de-privileged variant of VirtualBox <> running

inside a strongly isolated VM subject on top of Genode's base-hw kernel. See

the release notes of the Genode OS Framework version 16.08 <> for

more information about this exciting feature.



Components

~~~~~~~~~~

The Muen platform includes re-usable components which implement common services:



* Subject Monitor (SM) written in SPARK 2014

* Subject Loader (SL) written in SPARK 2014

* Timeserver subject written in SPARK 2014

* Debugserver subject written in Ada 2012

* Virtual Terminal (VT) subject written in Ada 2012



Furthermore the <> and <> Linux kernel modules provide virtual

filesystem and network interface drivers based on inter-subject memory

channels.



Toolchain

~~~~~~~~~

The Muen platform includes a versatile toolchain which facilitates the

specification and construction of component-based systems in different

application domains.



The <> tool for automated hardware description generation

simplifies the addition of support for new target machines. Scheduling plans

can be generated automatically from a scheduling configuration using the

<> tool.



Resources

---------



Documentation

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following detailed project documentation is available:



* Muen project report:

  https://muen.codelabs.ch/muen-report.pdf



* Muen project presentation:

  https://muen.codelabs.ch/muen-slides.pdf



* Muen toolchain document:

  https://muen.codelabs.ch/muen-toolchain.pdf



* Presentation given at High Integrity Software Conference HIS 2014:

  http://www.slideshare.net/AdaCore/slides-his-2014secunethsr



Mailing list

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The muen-dev@googlegroups.com mailing list is used for project announcements and

discussions regarding the Muen Separation Kernel.



* To subscribe to the list, send a (blank) mail to

  mailto:muen-dev+\subscribe@googlegroups.com[].

  Note: A Google account is *not* required, any email address should work.

* To post a message to the list write an email to muen-dev@googlegroups.com.

* The list has a Google Groups web interface:

  https://groups.google.com/group/muen-dev.



Download

--------

The Muen sources are available through the following git repository:



  $ git clone --recursive https://git.codelabs.ch/git/muen.git



A browsable version of the repository is available here:



https://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen.git



A ZIP archive of the current Muen sources can be downloaded here:



https://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen.git;a=snapshot;h=HEAD;sf=zip



NOTE: The ZIP archive cannot be used to build the example system since it does

      not contain all sub-projects.



Build

-----

The Muen SK has been developed and successfully tested using the development

environment listed in the following table.



|===================================================================

| Operating systems      | Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie), x86_64 +

                           Ubuntu 16.04.1 (Xenial Xerus), x86_64

| Ada compiler           | GNAT GPL 2016

| GCC version            | 4.9.6 20160426 for GNAT GPL 2016

| SPARK version          | GPL 2016

| Emulator               | Bochs (>= version 2.6.5)

| Intel AMT SoL client   | amtterm (>= commit 0ece513...)

| Intel vPro AMT / WSMan | amtc (github.com/schnoddelbotz/amtc)

|===================================================================



The following hardware is used for the development of Muen. There is a good

chance similar hardware works out-of-the box if the microarchitecture is Ivy

Bridge or newer.



|===================================================================

| Intel NUC 5i5MYHE              | Broadwell  | i5-5300U

| Cirrus7 Nimbus                 | Haswell    | i7-4765T

| Lenovo ThinkPad T440s          | Haswell    | i7-4600U

| Lenovo ThinkPad T430s          | Ivy Bridge | i7-3520M

| Intel NUC DC53427HYE           | Ivy Bridge | i5-3427U

| Kontron Technology KTQM77/mITX | Ivy Bridge | i7-3610QE

|===================================================================



The first step to build Muen is to install the required packages:



  $ sudo apt-get install acpica-tools binutils-dev git-core gnuplot \

      grub-pc-bin lcov libc6-dev libiberty-dev libxml2-utils make tidy wget \

      xorriso xsltproc zlib1g-dev



The Ada and SPARK packages currently available in Debian and Ubuntu are too old

to build Muen. GNAT/SPARK GPL 2016 from AdaCore's <> site must be

installed instead. Extend your `PATH` to make the GPL compiler and tools

visible to the Muen build system (assuming that they are installed below

`/opt`):



  $ export PATH=/opt/gnat/bin:/opt/spark/bin:$PATH



To build the Muen tools, RTS, kernel and example components change to the Muen

source directory and issue the following command:



  $ make



This will create an image containing the example system which can be booted by

any Multiboot <> compliant bootloader.



On Ubuntu 16.04.1 you might encounter an error of the form:



  /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crti.o: unrecognized relocation (0x2a) in section .init



If this is the case, rename the linker binary `ld` of GNAT GPL 2016 in order to

use the one provided by Ubuntu.



  $ cd /opt/gnat/libexec/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/4.9.4

  $ mv ld ld-archive



Deploy

------

The build system provides two ways to instantly deploy and test the created

system image.



Emulation

~~~~~~~~~

To ease kernel development, the Muen project makes use of emulation by

employing the Bochs IA-32 emulator <>. Among many other features, Bochs

has support for multiple processors, APIC emulation and VMX extensions.



Download Bochs from its project site and issue the following commands to build

and install it with `/usr/local` prefix:



  $ sudo apt-get install g++ libsdl1.2-dev

  $ tar xfvz bochs-2.6.5.tar.gz

  $ cd bochs-2.6.5

  $ ./configure           \

      --prefix=/usr/local \

      --enable-vmx=2      \

      --enable-smp        \

      --enable-cdrom      \

      --enable-x86-64     \

      --enable-avx        \

      --with-sdl

  $ make

  $ sudo make install



Issue the following command in the Muen project directory to start emulation:



  $ make emulate



The Bochs emulator output is located at `emulate/bochsout.txt`, the Muen kernel

serial console output is written to `emulate/serial.out`.



NOTE: As Bochs is missing IOMMU and PCI MMCONF emulation, device passthrough is

      not supported for this hardware target.



Hardware

~~~~~~~~

The top-level Makefile provides two convenient targets to deploy Muen to real

hardware: `iso` and `deploy`. The first creates a bootable ISO image which can

be burned on a CD-ROM or dumped on a USB stick, the second uses network boot to

shorten round-trips during development.



USB Stick

^^^^^^^^^

To create a bootable USB stick containing the Muen system, enter the following

commands in the top-level directory:



  $ make HARDWARE=platform/lenovo-t440s.xml SYSTEM=xml/demo_system_vtd.xml iso



Then follow the instructions on the screen.



Network Boot

^^^^^^^^^^^^

For fast deployment of the Muen system image to real hardware, the iPXE

<> boot firmware installed on a USB stick in conjunction with Intel Active

Management Technology (AMT) is used. Please refer to the amtterm <>

documentation on how to configure AMT on the target hardware.



To build and install iPXE with the Muen specific boot script issue the

following commands:



  $ sudo apt-get install liblzma-dev

  $ git clone git://git.ipxe.org/ipxe.git

  $ wget https://muen.codelabs.ch/muen.ipxe

  $ cd ipxe/src

  $ make bin/ipxe.usb EMBED=../../muen.ipxe

  $ sudo dd if=bin/ipxe.usb of=/dev/sdX



The `/dev/sdX` device is the USB stick (e.g. `/dev/sdc`, without partition

number). *All existing data will be erased*.



When booting from the created stick the first NIC (net0) is configured as follows:



  IP Address : 192.168.254.2

  Netmask    : 255.255.255.0

  Gateway    : 192.168.254.1



After initialization of the network adapter iPXE tries to download and boot the

system image from the following URL:



  http://192.168.254.1:8000/muen.img



The development machine must be connected to the target hardware via an

interface with IP address 192.168.254.1. To actually serve the created system

image to the bootloader, issue the following command in the top-level Muen

directory:



  $ export AMT_PASSWORD=

  $ make deploy



To view the output of the Muen kernel debug console use the command:



  $ amtterm 192.168.254.2



If your hardware differs from the default configuration, additionally specify

the `HARDWARE` variable:



  $ make deploy HARDWARE=platform/intel-nuc-dc53427hye.xml



References

----------

- [[[mboot]]]         Multiboot Specification, https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/multiboot/

- [[[bochs]]]         Bochs IA-32 Emulator, http://bochs.sourceforge.net/

- [[[ipxe]]]          iPXE boot firmware, https://ipxe.org/

- [[[amt]]]           Intel AMT SoL client + tools, https://www.kraxel.org/cgit/amtterm/

- [[[libre]]]         AdaCore Libre, https://libre.adacore.com/download/

- [[[genode]]]        Genode OS Framework, https://genode.org/

- [[[genode_muen]]]   Genode 16.08 release notes, https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/16.08

- [[[vbox]]]          VirtualBox, https://www.virtualbox.org

- [[[muenfs]]]        Muenfs Linux kernel module, https://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen/linux/muenfs.git

- [[[muennet]]]       Muennet Linux kernel module, https://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen/linux/muennet.git

- [[[mugenhwcfg]]]    Muen hardware config generator, https://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen/mugenhwcfg.git

- [[[mugenschedcfg]]] Muen scheduling plan generator, https://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen/mugenschedcfg.git



License

-------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright (C) 2013-2017  Reto Buerki 

Copyright (C) 2013-2017  Adrian-Ken Rueegsegger 



This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under

the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software

Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later

version.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------