OpenSGX: An Open Platform for SGX Research

Abstract

Abstract-Hardware technologies for trusted computing, or trusted execution environments (TEEs), have rapidly matured over the last decade. In fact, TEEs are at the brink of widespread commoditization with the recent introduction of Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX). Despite such rapid development of TEE, software technologies for TEE significantly lag behind their hardware counterpart, and currently only a select group of researchers have the privilege of accessing this technology. To address this problem, we develop an open source platform, called OpenSGX, that emulates Intel SGX hardware components at the instruction level and provides new system software components necessarily required for full TEE exploration. We expect that the OpenSGX framework can serve as an open platform for SGX research, with the following contributions. First, we develop a fully functional, instruction-compatible emulator of Intel SGX for enabling the exploration of software/hardware design space, and development of enclave programs. OpenSGX provides a platform for SGX development, meaning that it provides not just emulation but also operating system components, an enclave program loader/packager, an OpenSGX user library, debugging, and performance monitoring. Second, to show OpenSGX's use cases, we applied OpenSGX to protect sensitive information (e.g., directory) of Tor nodes and evaluated their potential performance impacts. Therefore, we believe OpenSGX has great potential for broader communities to spark new research on soon-to-becommodity Intel SGX.

Honey Onions: A framework for characterizing and identifying misbehaving Tor HSDirs

“…Furthermore, they are also working on a new design to mitigate various attacks against hidden services [21]. Another direction is to explore the capabilities of Intel SGX [22], [23], and make modifications to Tor to run inside enclaves [24]. …”

Avaliação do Intel Software Guard Extensions via Emulação

“…O OpenSGX [3]é uma extensão do QEMU, desenvolvida em conjunto pela Georgia Institute of Technology e a Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), que se propõe a oferecer as principais funcionalidades do SGX. A Figura 5 ilustra, resumidamente, a relação entre enclaves, OpenSGX e o QEMU.…”

“…Além do recurso de depuração intrínsecoà parceria entre QEMU e OpenSGX, há as funcionalidades de monitoramento de desempenho. Jain et al [3] demonstraram a viabilidade do OpenSGX em avaliar os potenciais impactos do SGX no desempenho de uma aplicação baseada na rede de anonimato Tor [19].…”

“…Como observado por Jain et al [3], o aumento no número total de ciclos parece advir, principalmente, do uso da biblioteca sgxlib, necessária para a adaptação das aplicações ao formato de enclave e do suporteàs chamadas de sistema implementadas na camada de emulação do OpenSGX, prin- IPC dos algoritmos com e sem o uso de enclaves nãoé uniforme. Istoé, as taxas de crescimento dos algoritmos com entradas maiores são menores que a diferença efetiva entre o tamanho das entradas.…”

“…Enquanto o SGX não estiver amplamente disponível, podese empregar um emulador como o OpenSGX [3] para reproduzir as diversas funcionalidades do SGX. Os recursos oferecidos pelo OpenSGX propiciam, além de uma prévia experiência com um sistema de enclaves, a possibilidade de uma avaliação a priori sobre o custo adicional em processamento imposto pelo SGX.…”