61 lines
3 KiB
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61 lines
3 KiB
Text
---
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title: Robust Open Bare-metal Ubiquitous Resilient
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author: someone
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---
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At robur, we build performant bespoke minimal operating systems for high-assurance services.
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Advantages
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* based on the unikernel pioneer [MirageOS](https://mirage.io)
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* secure implementation guarded against memory corruption, typelevel problems, leaky abstraction and unforseen state
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* ready for the cloud, services run on all major hypervisors
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* instant boot
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* competitive performance comparable to C / C++
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* can target embedded devices because of small size and the ability to compile to native code
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* minimized state allows to reason about entire systems and their adherence to the specification
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* extensive library ecosystem, yet minimal trusted code base at runtime
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from scratch with security in mind, directly on the virtualization layer.
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Each service is a separate virtual machine image with exactly the
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required code, and no need for a multi-purpose operating system kernel.
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This makes our systems much smaller. The binary size of an HTTP server with TLS
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support in our system is around 4% compared to one in a conventional operating
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system, making the attack surface much smaller.
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Additionally, we use a safe programming language: a statically and strongly
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typed functional programming language with automated memory management. This
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reduces the attack vectors: temporal and spatial memory corruption are no
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concern anymore. The declarative programming style makes it possible to
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formally verify the correctness of the entire virtual machine with a theorem
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prover.
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One of our single purpose operating systems boots within milliseconds, and has a
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tiny memory footprint. For client-side features that run in a webbrowser, we
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compile to JavaScript from the same codebase, to ensure consistency. The strong
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and static type system helps to detect errors early, and enables rapid
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prototyping. For production use the prototype code can be further optimized for
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performance.
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## Conclusion
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MirageOS started as a research project, and has matured to a full suite for
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building secure operating systems, with libraries that work well in production
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and cover a variety of application needs. MirageOS is a game changer for secure
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network services, since the attack surface is minimised to 1% of the size of
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other contemporary operating systems. In addition, common attack vectors are
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avoided by the usage of a programming language with memory safety. A unikernel
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boots within tens of milliseconds, and services can be spawned on demand. When a
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request (e.g. a DNS request) for a unikernel comes in, the kernel boots up,
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handles the request, and is destroyed after an inactivity period. Only the
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necessary services need to run, and they can be short-lived to minimize state in
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the system.
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The choice of a high-level programming language also allows for rapid
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prototyping, new features can be developed quickly. In contrast to scripting
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languages, the code does not need to be re-implemented for production use (but
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nevertheless can be fine-tuned for performance).
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WHY YOU NEED THIS!
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WHAT ERRORS WE CAN AVOID
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HOW WE CAN HELP
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