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2017-09-17 11:25:21 -04:00

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title: Robust Open Bare-metal Ubiquitous Resilient
author: someone
---
At robur, we build performant bespoke minimal operating systems for high-assurance services.
With our approach to systems development we provide the following advantages for you:
* systems based on the unikernel pioneer [MirageOS](https://mirage.io)
* secure implementation guarded against memory corruption, typelevel problems, leaky abstraction and unforseen state
* ready for the cloud, services run on all major hypervisors
* instant boot
* competitive performance comparable to C / C++
* can target embedded devices because of small size and the ability to compile to native code
* minimized state allows to reason about entire systems and their adherence to the specification
* extensive library ecosystem, yet minimal trusted code base at runtime
* rapid prototyping with a seamless path from prototype to production
Computers on the Internet get compromised mostly to gain or block access to data.
User data is being downloaded, leaked and sold, or ransomware blocks access to user data until a fee
is paid. Other common attacks target compute resources, to use them in denial of service
attacks or to manipulate opinion with chatbots.
The software stack often includes code which is no longer needed, such as floppy
disk drivers which is around at runtime, which is an unneccessary attack
surface. Critical security updates are rarely deployed in time, because such a
change may result in unforeseen behaviour. Additionally, lots of embedded
devices (home router, SmartTV, etc.) do not have a secure update channel.
Instead of trying to fix these decades-old operating systems, which were
designed as multi-user time sharing systems of the past, we build small services
from scratch with security in mind, directly on the hypervisor. In
our operating system, each service is a separate virtual machine with only the
required code.
This makes our systems much smaller. The binary size of an HTTP server with TLS
support in our system is around 4% compared to one in a conventional operating
system, making the attack surface much smaller.
Additionally, we use a safe programming language: a statically and strongly
typed functional programming language with automated memory management. This
reduces the attack vectors: temporal and spatial memory corruption are no
concern anymore. The declarative programming style makes it possible to
formally verify the correctness of the entire virtual machine with a theorem
prover.
One of our single purpose operating systems boots within milliseconds, and has a
minimal memory footprint. For client-side features that run in a webbrowser, we
compile to JavaScript from the same codebase, to ensure consistency. The strong
and static type system helps to detect errors early, and enables rapid
prototyping. For production use the prototype code can be further optimized for
performance.
## Conclusion
MirageOS started as a research project, and has matured to a full suite for
building secure operating systems, with libraries that work well in production
and cover a variety of application needs. MirageOS is a game changer for secure
network services, since the attack surface is minimised to 1% of the size of
other contemporary operating systems. In addition, common attack vectors are
avoided by the usage of a programming language with memory safety. A unikernel
boots within tens of milliseconds, and services can be spawned on demand. When a
request (e.g. a DNS request) for a unikernel comes in, the kernel boots up,
handles the request, and is destroyed after an inactivity period. Only the
necessary services need to run, and they can be short-lived to minimize state in
the system.
The choice of a high-level programming language also allows for rapid
prototyping, new features can be developed quickly. In contrast to scripting
languages, the code does not need to be re-implemented for production use (but
nevertheless can be fine-tuned for performance).
WHY YOU NEED THIS!
WHAT ERRORS WE CAN AVOID
HOW WE CAN HELP