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genode | seL4 | |
---|---|---|
14 | 60 | |
8 | 4,538 | |
- | 1.7% | |
0.0 | 9.0 | |
7 days ago | 6 days ago | |
C | C | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 only | GNU General Public License v3.0 or later |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
genode
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Design, Implementation and Evaluation of the SeL4 Device Driver Framework [pdf]
seL4 foundation members[0] are using it.
There's Genode[1], which supports it among other kernels, offering a fancy desktop environment.
However, efforts like this driver framework do help. There's also Makatea[2], an effort to implement a stronger Qubes-like system based on seL4.
0. https://sel4.systems/Foundation/Membership/
1. https://genode.org/
2. https://trustworthy.systems/projects/makatea/
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eBPF Documentary
> While this is true from a certain perspective, machine code creates a system which must grand access to many things to become usable. A shared file system is a good example of this. Some software could easily echo a line into you .profile that tries to launch a key-logger, and this works in many cases.
That's common, but it's certainly not a requirement to run native code. For example, we've done a pretty good job at retroactively fixing that while preserving backwards compatibility with containers (I can, and have run normal official Firefox binaries inside a docker container with zero access to my real home directory) or sandboxes like flatpak (bubblewrap). If you want to run real native binaries but don't have to preserve backwards compatibility, then it gets easy; genode ( https://genode.org/ ) does a lovely job of truly practicing only giving programs what access you want to give them.
> The expectation of software existing as opaque files creates a huge amount of work for the OS in verifying the exact behaviour of the software as it runs (and in ways which can often be circumvented), rather than a source-based approach in which malware is never allowed to touch the processor.
I think you're overoptimistic regarding what you can do with the source code short of manual (human) auditing. I mean, sure there are things you can scan for to try and catch bad behavior, but in the case of actual malice I wouldn't trust automatic code analysis to protect me.
>> I'm typing this on a nice comfy GNU/Linux box where the only blobs are some firmware
> So you suffer the worst of both worlds then. You've had to download and compile the source yourself, but as the software is designed around being distributed as blobs, so you enjoy none of the benefits that might come from source distribution.
I have no idea why you think either of those things? Depending on the distro I certainly can compile from source on my own box (ex. Gentoo, NixOS), but I can also use precompiled binaries (ex. Debian, NixOS) while still having it be trivial to go find the exact source that went in to the binary package I downloaded (this has gotten even stronger with Reproducibility efforts meaning that I can even verify the exact source and build config that created a specific binary). The actual application software and OS are available as Open Source code that can be audited, with binaries available as a convenience, and the only remaining blobs (unwelcome but impractical to fix so far) are firmware blobs with relatively constrained roles (and on machines with an IOMMU we can even enforce what access they have, which is a nice mitigation).
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Showstopper: Nobody is writing new operating systems any more
Genode[1] is slowly approaching the point at which I can use it as a daily driver. I hope it makes it before Windows 10 goes away. It will be nice to never have to work about viruses, or spyware, etc., any more. It'll be like a trip back to the free spirited days of DOS and write protected floppy boot disks.
[1] https://genode.org/
- GNU/Hurd strikes back: How to use the legendary OS in a (somewhat) practical way
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Ask HN: How to get into OS/systems programming in 2023?
I'd dig into genode[1], which is a capability based operating system. You'll likely see an upsurge in interest in capability based systems in the next decade.
[1] https://genode.org/
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Linux Kernel Ksmbd Use-After-Free Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Yet another exploit that just wouldn't work on a well-designed system, such as Genode[0].
0. https://genode.org/
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the maddening truth of using Qubes
Have you looked at Genode? I don't think it's usable day-to-day yet but the concepts seem interesting.
- The Helios Microkernel: Written in Hare
- We've started a RISC-V64 Microkernel OS Project called "Generisc". We're gonna redo eveything an OS is with the "end" goal of a fully fledged running web-browser. Anybody wanna come aboard. Support and ideas is enough. No need for coding if you don't have time, just interest and feedback is good
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Anyone wanna join me in changing out the Linux kernel with seL4? Not running LFS inside a seL4 hypervisor, but actually a native seL4 OS.
Maybe you should go into details a bit more what you are planning and why. There are (and have been) several approaches here. The most prominent might be Genode (https://www.reddit.com/r/genode, https://genode.org) and joining forces there might be a better approach than starting another project that will get lost in the details and complexity eventually.
seL4
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From L3 to seL4 what have we learnt in 20 years of L4 microkernels? [video]
> People like to snob Unix but the fact is: the world runs on Unix.
The world you are aware of runs on it.
> Can we really do that much better or is it just hubris?
Yes. Have a look at seL4[1] and Barrelfish too[2], even though that's no longer active. seL4 in particular is powering a lot of highly secure computing systems. There is a surprisingly large sphere outside of Unix/POSIX.
[1] https://sel4.systems/
[2] https://barrelfish.org/
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On the Costs of Syscalls
There are also RTOS-capable microkernels such as seL4[0], with few but extremely fast syscalls[1]. Note times are in cycles, not usec.
0. https://sel4.systems/
1. https://sel4.systems/About/Performance/
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Can the language of proof assistants be used for general purpose programming?
https://sel4.systems
Working on a number of platforms, verified on some. Multicore support is an ongoing effort afaict.
On OS built on this kernel is still subject to some assumptions (like, hardware working correctly, bootloader doing its job, etc). But mostly those assumptions are less of a problem / easier to prove than the properties of a complex software system.
As I understand it, guarantees that seL4 does provide, go well beyond anything else currently out there.
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How to write TEE/Trusted OS for ARM microcontrollers?
Take a look at this: https://sel4.systems/
- Simulation: KI-Drohne der US Air Force eliminiert Operator für Punktemaximierung
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Paragon Graphite is a Pegasus spyware clone used in the US
It's probably have to be seL4 (https://sel4.systems), running on some fully OSS hardware.
There are question marks over much of available RISC-V chips due to chinese producers, so maybe OpenPower based hardware?
Plus, the entire system (motherboard, etc) would need to be manufactured using a good supply chain.
Hmmm, this has probably all been thought through in depth before by others. :)
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Basic SAT model of x86 instructions using Z3, autogenerated from Intel docs
You can use it to (mostly) validate small snippets are the same. See Alive2 for the application of Z3/formalization of programs as SMT for that [1]. As far as I'm aware there are some problems scaling up to arbitrarily sized programs due to a lack of formalization in higher level languages in addition to computational constraints. With a lot of time and effort it can be done though [2].
1. https://github.com/AliveToolkit/alive2
2. https://sel4.systems/
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What are the current hot topics in type theory and static analysis?
Formal methods. This is not in most general-purpose programming languages and probably never will be (maybe we'll see formal methods to verify unsafe code in Rust...) because it's a ton of boilerplate (you have to help the compiler type-check your code) and also extremely complicated. However, formal methods is very important for proving code secure, such as sel4 (microkernel formally verified to not have bugs or be exploitable) which has just received the ACM Software Systems Award 3 days ago.
- Rust Now Available for Real-Time Operating System and Hypervisor PikeOS
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Amiga and AmigaOS should move to ARM.
Today we'd look at seL4.
What are some alternatives?
madaidans-insecurities.github.io
l4v - seL4 specification and proofs
omnios-build - Build system for OmniOS
fprime - F´ - A flight software and embedded systems framework
Helios-NG - Breathing new live in Helios, an OS from the 90's
nomicon - The Dark Arts of Advanced and Unsafe Rust Programming
systemd-for-administrators - A systemd-Handbook written by Lennart Poettering
CompCert - The CompCert formally-verified C compiler
qubes-app-linux-usb-proxy - USBIP over qrexec proxy
InitWare - The InitWare Suite of Middleware allows you to manage services and system resources as logical entities called units. Its main component is a service management ("init") system.
manjarno - Why you shouldn't use Manjaro
4.4BSD-Lite2 - 4.4BSD Lite Release 2: last Unix operating system from Berkeley