clarify virtualization / microkernel plans

This commit is contained in:
Daniel Micay 2019-06-11 09:12:49 -04:00
parent fe550c7556
commit 39185f2390

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as the core of the OS and foundation of the security model. It needs to move towards a
microkernel-based model with a Linux compatibility layer, with many stepping stones
leading towards that goal including adopting virtualization-based isolation.</p>
<p>The initial phase for the long-term roadmap of moving away from the current
foundation will be to deploy and integrate a hypervisor like Xen to leverage it for
reinforcing existing security boundaries. Linux would be running inside the virtual
machines at this point, inside and outside of the sandboxes being reinforced. In the
longer term, Linux inside the sandboxes can be replaced with a compatibility layer
like gVisor, which would need to be ported to arm64 and given a new backend alongside
the existing KVM backend. Over the longer term, i.e. many years from now, Linux can
fade away completely and so can the usage of virtualization. The anticipation is that
many other projects are going to be interested in this kind of migration, so it's not
going to be solely a GrapheneOS project, as demonstrated by the current existence of
the gVisor project and various other projects working on virtualization deployments
for mobile. Having a hypervisor with verified boot still intact will also provide a
way to achieve some of the goals based on extensions to Trusted Execution Environment
(TEE) functionality even without having GrapheneOS hardware.</p>
<p>Hardware and firmware security are core parts of the project, but it's currently
limited to research and submitting suggestions and bug reports upstream. In the long
term, the project will need to move into the hardware space.</p>