Apple Joins the SeL4 Foundation

by fork-bomber • 2 years ago

94 27 2 years ago

542458• 2 years ago

For context, the Apple Secure Enclave chips run an NICTA L4-based microkernel, albeit not SeL4 specifically as far as I know (given the Secure Enclave launched in 2006 and NICTA released SeL4 in 2014). I wonder if this indicates plans to adopt SeL4?

SeL4 is extremely cool technology. It has been formally proven to be bug-free against its specification, which massively simplifies the development of high-security high-reliability systems. I feel like there’s a lot more development to be seen in this space.

daghamm2• 2 years ago

"against its specification"

Which itself is not know to be bugfree.

(And is 10x the size of the source code and in a language that is less readable than x64 assembler)

fooker• 2 years ago

This is the price of contemporary formal methods.

Hopefully things get better and more practically useful.

flawsofar• 2 years ago

All code is either useless or unreadable

simplereally• 2 years ago

Is the specification really 10x the size of the source code, or are you including the proof of the specification?

Your claim about "x64 assembler" is dubious.

naasking3• 2 years ago

Which itself is not know to be bugfree.

Not totally correct, from:

https://sel4.systems/Info/FAQ/proof.html

    The binary code of the ARM and RISCV64 versions of the seL4 microkernel correctly implement the behaviour described in its abstract specification and nothing more. Furthermore, the specification and the seL4 binary satisfy the classic security properties called *integrity* and *confidentiality*.
    [...]
    Previously, in 2009, we had only proved functional correctness between the C code of the kernel and its specification. Now we have additionally shown binary correctness, that is, the compiler and linker need not be trusted, and we have shown that the specification indeed implies strong security properties as intended.

So the specification has indeed been proven to be free of certain security bugs.

WhitneyLand• 2 years ago

I’m not sure If you are really convinced that’s true or it’s supposed to be understood as an exaggeration.

It is subjective, and I’ll grant it’s not the most intuitive thing to look at, but I don’t agree it’s worse than assembly. Besides the readability of the specification is not some priori limitation.

Sel4 spec example

definition

  set_endpoint :: "endpoint ⇒ data ⇒ state ⇒ state

where

  set_endpoint ep data s ≡ s

    (ep := (IdleEP, data))

snazz• 2 years ago

What product from 2006 did it come with? My understanding was that the Secure Enclave came out with the iPhone 5s in 2013 (still before 2014, so your point stands, I’m just curious).

herpdyderp• 2 years ago

Apple's own docs indicate the iPhone 5s was the first device with it as well: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/sec59b0b31ff/web

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

Maybe I'm naive but why do these small single-purpose chips need kernels? Ease of development? Their use-cases sometimes seem trivial enough for a simple finite state machine.

surajrmal• 2 years ago

It depends on how much code runs on it. After a certain scale you want better tolerance for failures by isolating those failures. Team structure can also play a role.

trollied• 2 years ago

If you're interested, the microkernel is open source: https://github.com/seL4/seL4

repelsteeltje• 2 years ago

More precisely: Generally, kernel-level code is licensed under GPLv2 and user-level code under the 2-clause BSD license.

lunfard0002• 2 years ago

the project seems active but last (github) release was 3 years ago?

naasking3• 2 years ago

I'm not sure you should expect much development for a microkernel that has been proven to meet its specification and to be free of bugs. Microkernels are supposed to have a very small API, so there's not much development needed there unless it doesn't the specification or has other kinds of bugs, which is obviously not the case here.

admax88qqq• 2 years ago

This is the type of software that is "finished". I would expect the code to be pretty frozen.

fidotron• 2 years ago

Interesting if unsurprising this is shortly after the AArch64 verification was completed.

And credit where it’s due, I know we love dumping on the national security apparatus, but the UK NCSC actually funded that work, which is a clear net win.

darksaints• 2 years ago

Any chance this could become the kernel for Darwin?

microtonal• 2 years ago

More likely future versions of the Secure Enclave (since the SE already uses L4).

iforgotmysocks• 2 years ago

macOS(and other OSes in Apple ecosystem like iOS) currently uses XNU kernel which is hybrid kernel

Hybrid kernel combine both a monolithic kernel and micro kernel

In macOS Mach is micro kernel and Darwin is monolithic kernel

ytch• 2 years ago

A little bit unrelated, but reading through their member list:

https://sel4.systems/Foundation/Membership/

reminds me that Jobs explains why their company called "Apple Computer" is: "I worked at Atari, and it got us ahead of Atari in the phone book."[1].

Apple is the first one of all sel4 general member too.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-archive-name-apple-201...

smugma• 2 years ago

Amazon one-ups Apple in this regard.

mdhb• 2 years ago

Hopefully they won’t be the absolute waste of time as a company that they have been on the web standards working groups. Hard to trust them at this point in any collaborative sense.

Apple Joins the SeL4 Foundation

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