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ACE-RISCV is an open-source project, whose goal is to deliver a confidential computing framework with a formally proven security monitor. It is based on the canonical architecture and targets RISC-V with the goal of being portable to other architectures. The formal verification efforts focus on the security monitor implementation. We invite collaborators to work with us to push the boundaries of provable confidential computing technology.
Formal verification: This project implements the RISC-V CoVE spec's deployment model 3 referenced in Appendix D. The formal specification is embedded in the security monitor's source code and the proofs are in the verification/ folder. Please read our paper1 and paper2 to learn about the approach and goals.
Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and Attestation: ACE supports local attestation, a mechanism to authenticate confidential VMs intended for embedded systems with limited or no network connectivity. We already support PQC, specifically we use ML-KEM, SHA-384, and AES-GCM-256 cryptography.
We are currently building on RISC-V 64-bit with integer (I), atomic (A) and hypervisor extentions (H), physical memory protection (PMP), memory management unit (MMU), IOPMP, core-local interrupt controller (CLINT), and supervisor timecmp extension (Sstc).
RISC-V hardware to run ACE:
- SiFive P550 evaluation board, see instructions.
Follow instructions to run one of the sample confidential workloads under an untrusted Linux KVM hypervisor in an emulated RISC-V environment.
Full compilation of the framework takes a long time because many tools are built from sources. Our toolchain currently includes: hypervisor kernel (Linux kernel), confidential guest kernel (Linux kernel) and firmware (security monitor with OpenSBI firmware). Make sure to build this project on a machine with at least 4 cores, 4GB RAM, and 50GB disk space for reasonable (~30min) build time.
You must install build dependencies specific to the operating system you use AND install the Rust toolchain. You can also look at the reproducible build configuration of the continous integration (CI) system.
Dependencies for Ubuntu 22.04
Install the latest Rust:
Checkout this repository with submodules:
Run the following commands from the directory containing this README file.
Make sure once again that all submodules are fetched:
Set up the ACE_DIR variable to point to the location where the project will build. Default is the build/ subdirectory of the location where you will execute the make command.
The following command will build the entire framework. Set -j flag to the number of processor cores you have in the system. Below command assumes that you have 4 cores.
Alternativly, you can build individual components to avoid long builds that can lead to 'ssh disconnections', 'hangups', and similar issues.
Install all develoment tools required to compile code for the RISC-V architecture:
Build the host OS -- a Linux KVM hypervisor:
Build the low level firmware responsible for the boot process. This command will also build the security monitor (SM):
Build sample confidential workloads:
Build the RISC-V emulator and utility tools that simplify running the test environment:
Make sure you have the ACE_DIR environmental variable set and it points to the location of your build. Check the 'Compilation' section in case this variable is not set.
To run the test environment on a RISC-V emulator run:
You should see the output from the boot process and a promt to login to the hypervisor:
To run the sample Linux OS as a confidential VM (login: root, password: passwd) execute:
You should see the output indicating that local attestation suceeded:
You can login now to the confidential VM:
You can read the secret from the inside of the confidential VM:
You should see the secret:
Integrating local attestation with dm-crypt/LUKS is work in progress. When finished, you will be able to encrypt your rootfs and pass the decryption key via TAP. A script in initrd will then retrieve the decryption key from TAP and decrypt the rootfs.
This repository is distributed under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License, see LICENSE.
This is an active research project, without warranties of any kind.
Our newest full paper on ACE:
Our workshop paper on ACE:
Our paper on context switch validation:
