Symposium on Networked Security / Industrie 4.0 Sep 21, 2016

Genode will attend the Symposium on Networked Security / Industrie 4.0 at the Security Essen fair.

The underlying motif of the symposium is "Future scenarios are becoming increasingly realistic - intelligent software and control equipment are changing the worlds of work and manufacturing". Christian Helmuth will present Genode as an answer to the security challenges posed by Industrie 4.0, interconnected manufacturing, and the integration of applications of mixed criticality.

Symposium on Networked Security / Industry 4.0

Security Essen fair, CC West, Hall Berlin

September 28, 2016, Essen, Germany

http://www.security-essen.de/for-visitors/fair-information/symposium/

Interactive and dynamic workloads on top of the seL4 kernel Sep 20, 2016

Genode's flexible and scalable OS architecture can now be combined with the formally verified seL4 microkernel.

SeL4 promises to be a firm foundation for trustworthy systems because it is widely regarded as the world's most advanced open-source microkernel. The kernel applies the lessons learned in twenty years of L4 microkernel research and commercial deployment. In addition, seL4 underwent a complete formal verification and is accompanied by a functional correctness proof of its implementation as well as a complete proof chain of high-level security properties down to the executable binary. SeL4 was designed to accommodate dynamic operating systems with high assurance requirements but up to now, its current use cases remain static in nature or combine static components with virtualization.

Here Genode comes into play with the ambition to provide an operating system framework for today's dynamic workloads and security demands. We are proud to announce that Genode 16.08 makes the entirety of the framework's drivers, protocol stacks, libraries, and applications available on top of the seL4 kernel. This enables users of seL4 to compose dynamic and interactive scenarios from a plethora of ready-to-use Genode components. For illustrating the potential, we assembled a live scenario that can be tested in a virtual machine or directly on PC hardware. download the live scenario...

Genode OS Framework 16.08 released Aug 31, 2016

Beyond the vastly improved support for seL4, the new release brings a lot of improvements in other areas ranging from networking over virtualization to new tools for statistical profiling.

One highlight is the virtual networking component for routing and NAT accompanied with the ability to use the TOR network. In contrast to existing approaches, the crucial code base needed to anonymize the network traffic, namely the TOR proxy component, depends on a much less complex code base as it is executed as a component on Genode. Especially in combination with virtualization, this scenario might become an interesting technological base for approaches like TAILS or Whonix.

The ability to run VirtualBox on top of a microkernel has become a key feature of Genode that underwent two major improvements in the last release cycle. First, the developers from Codelabs contributed their efforts in running unmodified guest operating systems on top their Muen separation kernel with a port of VirtualBox 4. And second, the new release includes an initial version of VirtualBox 5 on top of the NOVA kernel.

The accompanied release documentation covers all changes in detail.

Genode OS Framework 16.05 released May 31, 2016

With Genode 16.05, the framework API undergoes a fundamental revision, the Rust language becomes available to Genode components, GDB can now be used on 64-bit NOVA, and all ported device drivers have been updated to the current versions of the Linux and OpenBSD kernels.

We are proud to announce Genode 16.05, which represents the most fundamental update of the framework's application-programming interface (API) in the project's history. The new API is designed to reduce complexity, to lower the risk for programming bugs, and - at the same time - further increase the framework's flexibility. It is the result of countless experiments and condenses our joint experience with the development of over hundred components.

The fundamental API renovation prompted us to accompany Genode 16.05 with a new revision of the "Genode Foundations" book, which can be downloaded as PDF.

The second major focus of the current release is the updated arsenal of device drivers. All drivers that we ported from Linux were upgraded to the Linux kernel 4.4.3. Specifically, the drivers are the Intel wireless stack, the Intel graphics driver, the USB driver, and the TCP/IP stack. Thereby, Genode users are able to leverage the same drivers as up-to-date Linux distributions but each driver encapsulated in a dedicated protection domain. The audio driver, which we ported from OpenBSD, received an update to OpenBSD 5.9. The device drivers are complemented with new infrastructure that makes ACPI platform controlling and monitoring features available to Genode users.

Further highlights are the added ability to use the Rust programming language in Genode components and the enhanced support for using the GNU debugger on top of the NOVA hypervisor.

Details about all improvements and API changes are provided by the release documentation of version 16.05...

Genode OS Framework 16.02 released Feb 26, 2016

Genode 16.02 introduces the RISC-V hardware architecture to the framework, enables the secure pass-through of USB devices to virtual machines, and updates the Muen separation kernel and the seL4 microkernel.

In contrast to the feature-oriented previous release, the new version focuses on diverse topics around low-level platform support. First, there is the addition of a new hardware architecture. With the addition of RISC-V, we anticipate future trustworthy open-source hardware platforms.

Second, as the major functional addition motivated by Genode's use as day-to-day OS, the new version adds the ability to assign USB devices to virtual machines in a dynamic yet secure way. This clears the way to cover many typical desktop work-flows with a Genode-based system.

With respect to the framework's underlying kernels, we are happy to announce the update of the Muen separation kernel to version 0.7 and the update of the seL4 kernel to version 2.1. The new version of Muen comes with welcome work-flow improvements. In fact, the separation kernel can now be targeted by Genode's automation tools in the same uniform way as all the other base platforms.

An in-depth coverage of these and many more improvements is provided by the release documentation of version 16.02...

Genode talks at FOSDEM 2016 Jan 20, 2016

There are four Genode-related talks scheduled at FOSDEM 2016 in Brussels.

The schedule for this year's FOSDEM in Brussels has been finalized. Genode will show a strong presence in the form of four talks. On Saturday (January 30), we will contribute to the microkernel developer room (K.4.601) with a variety of topics. On Sunday, we have the chance to present our current state of Genode as desktop OS at the Desktops developer room. The detailed Genode-specific schedule is as follows:

Saturday 10:40, Microkernel developer room, K.4.601

Norman Feske "An exploration of the seL4 kernel from Genode's perspective" abstract

Saturday 14:10, Microkernel developer room, K.4.601

Emery Hemingway "Porting Nix to Genode - Package management without a canonical file system" abstract

Saturday 15:55, Microkernel developer room, K.4.601

Martin Stein "Genode's TrustZone demo on the USB Armory" abstract

Sunday 10:20, Desktops developer room, K.4.401

Norman Feske "Genode as Desktop OS" abstract

Road Map 2016 Jan 19, 2016

The just published Genode road map puts emphasis on fostering community participation.

After we kicked off the road map discussion for 2016 on the Genode mailing list in mid of December with a reflection of the last year and a vision for the next year, many different opinions, plans, and suggestions were exchanged. Whereas the technical directions and interests of the participants were quite diverse, everyone agreed that now would be a good time to open up Genode to a broader community. In particular, the desire for guiding documentation that includes code examples was voiced multiple times. Furthermore, our aspiration to make Genode palatable as a desktop OS for a narrow group of end users received common acknowledgement. Those two directions have become the basis for the finalized road map for 2016...

Upcoming Hack'n'Hike end of May Jan 18, 2016

The registration is open for our yearly Hack'n'Hike event.

The Hack'n'Hike is the yearly highlight of the Genode developer community. We meet at a cozy accommodation for multiple days. At daylight, we spend the time at beautiful nature sites, which is the perfect setting for letting ideas flow and just enjoy the companionship of the others. In the evenings, we turn to hacking on various projects, teaming up to work on challenging problems, or learning new things.

This year, the Hack'n'Hike will take place during 27th - 30th of May. We picked the Gutshaus Heeselicht in Stolpen as our venue.

Everyone who is interested in getting involved with the community, catching up, or just hanging out with the Genode crowd is welcomed to join! As every year, the Hack'n'Hike is sponsored by Genode Labs. So your participation/accommodation is free. Please let us know until the 26th of January if you like to join in. You can do so by writing to hacknhike@genode-labs.com or by commenting at the official Hack'n'Hike issue.