This is a guest blog post by Rich Persaud, former member of the Citrix XenServer and XenClient engineering and business teams. He is currently a consultant to BAE Systems, working on the OpenXT project, which stands on the shoulders of the Xen Project, OpenEmbedded Linux and XenClient XT.
While the Xen Project is well known for servers and hosted infrastructure, Type-1 hypervisors have been used in client endpoints and network appliances, improving security and remote manageability. Virtualization-based security in Qubes and Windows 10 is also educating system administrators about hardware security (IOMMU and TPM) and application trust models.
Released as open-source software in 2014, OpenXT is a development toolkit for hardware-assisted security research and appliance integration. It includes hardened Linux VMs that can be configured as a user-facing software appliance for client devices, with virtualization of storage, network, input, sound, display and USB devices. Hardware targets include laptops, desktops and workstations.
OpenXT stands on the shoulders of the Xen Project, OpenEmbedded Linux and XenClient XT. It is optimized for hardware-assisted virtualization with an IOMMU and a TPM. It configures Xen network driver domains, Linux stub domains, Xen Security Modules, Intel TXT, SE Linux, GPU passthrough and VPNs. Guest operating systems include Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. VM storage options include encrypted VHD files with boot-time measurement and non-persistence.
The picture above shows one of many configurations of the OpenXT software stack, including Xen, Linux and other components.
The inaugural OpenXT Summit brings together developers and ecosystem participants for a 2-day conference in Fairfax, VA, USA on June 7-8, 2016. The event is hosted by Intel Corporation. The audience for this event includes kernel and application developers, hardware designers, system integrators and security architects.
The 2016 OpenXT Summit will chart the evolution of OpenXT from cross-domain endpoint virtualization to an extensible systems innovation platform, enabling derivative products to make security assurances for diverse hardware, markets and use cases.
The Summit includes one day of presentations, a networking reception and one day of moderated technical discussions. Presentation topics will include OpenXT architecture, TPM 2.0, Intel SGX, Xen security, measured launch, graphics virtualization and NSA research on virtualization and trusted computing.
For more information, please see the event website at http://openxt.org/summit.
For presentations and papers related to OpenXT, please see http://openxt.org/history.