Composable Operating System / Barkhausen Institut

Composable Operating System

We build a secure operating system based on a microkernel architecture to reduce complexity and maximize component isolation. Serving the key principle of Composability Hardware and Software, our system consists of small building blocks that cooperate securely in a distributed use case. We co-design our operating system with the Scalable Computing Hardware and Wireless Connectivity and Sensing groups to solve platform and network security problems. The Composable Operating Systems group will provide the essential building blocks from which customized systems for IoT use cases can be built.

From simulator to hardware

We work closely with the Scalable Computing Hardware team to bring our operating system from a software-based simulator to actual hardware. To this end, we instantiate all hardware building blocks of Scalable Computing Hardware on an FPGA circuit emulator, which allows us to evaluate hardware designs and test interaction with software components of our operating system. In the end, our operating system and applications shall run on a real system on chip.

Enabling trade-offs between security and costs

Security is not for free. For example, physical isolation of components by placing them onto different cores requires additional resources. We investigate how exclusive and shared usage of resources can be provided with the same mechanisms, allowing system designers to choose between maximal isolation and minimal resource usage on a case-by-case basis.

Updatability and attestation of components

For the whole system to be trustworthy, it is critical that only those components that are responsible for a specific scenario can communicate with each other and that they behave as intended. We research minimal hardware and software support for secure attestation of each component's identity and integrity. This support is also needed to realize secure software updates.

Science Communication through film

We sometimes take unconventional paths to make our research accessible to a wider audience. One of our presentations was so well received by the audience that we turned it into an explanatory film on the topic of 'Data security by modularization.’ In the film, little animated robots illustrate how the software in smartphones works and how we can protect it. The smartphone also serves as a symbol for the digital infrastructure in the networked world of tomorrow.

Who we are

Dr.-Ing.Michael RoitzschResearch Group Leader

Dr.-Ing.Nils AsmussenPrincipal Researcher

Dr.-Ing.Carsten WeinholdPrincipal Researcher

M.Sc. Inf.Matthias HilleAssociate Researcher

Dipl.-Inf.Till MiemietzAssociate Researcher

M. Sc.Viktor ReuschAssociate Researcher

Prof. Dr.Hermann HärtigBI Research Fellow

Prof. Dr.Matthias WählischBI Research Fellow

Publications

Nilanjana Das, Friedrich Pauls, Mattis Hasler, Sebastian Haas, Nils Asmussen, Hardware Attack Models in the Tiled Chip Multi-Core Processor: A Survey, 2024 IEEE 17th International Symposium on Embedded Multicore/Many-core Systems-on-Chip (MCSoC), 2024

@inproceedings{
DasMCSoC24,
title = "Hardware Attack Models in the Tiled Chip Multi-Core Processor: A Survey",
author = "Nilanjana Das, Friedrich Pauls, Mattis Hasler, Sebastian Haas, Nils Asmussen",
year = "2024",
booktitle = "2024 IEEE 17th International Symposium on Embedded Multicore/Many-core Systems-on-Chip (MCSoC)"
}

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