Wind River Blog Network

Operating System Hardening Techniques and Security Strategies

By AJ Shipley

In my last blog post, I focused on securing the device at a high level, and in this post, I’d like to dive a bit deeper into the technical aspects of device security; specifically, regarding defense against “run time,” or operational vulnerabilities, that a system is exposed to after it has booted up. 

A defense in depth approach requires that we assume that the integrity of the system will be compromised at some point, so we must implement security capabilities that are designed to mitigate such a breach if and when it happens.  One of the most devastating outcomes of a cyber security attack is for a malicious user to gain “root” access.  The threats that target the largest percentage of vulnerabilities are designed with this specific goal in mind, and in fact, the tagline of the popular Metasploit Framework is “Point, Click, Root.” 

If we operate under the assumption that a malicious actor will gain access to the system, we must ask ourselves what is the most effective way to quarantine those bad actors when it happens.  Various forms of access control, whether discretionary, non-discretionary, or mandatory access control ensure that if a system becomes compromised, the attacker does not have access to the resources or critical technology contained in the system.  Additionally, partitioning technologies such as a hypervisor or a separation kernel, ensure that a compromised operating system is not able to access other operating systems that may be running mission critical applications.

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How Simics Gets Started (with video)

By Jakob Engblom

Having worked with Simics for more than a decade, it is easy to get blind to the obvious. To me, starting a Simics simulation is a trivial thing that I do many times per day. However, to a newcomer to the product, it is not so obvious, and it might even seem a bit daunting. It is not daunting, and it is not difficult, as shown in this video on YouTube.

As can be seen in the video, we start Simics sessions by invoking a target setup script or opening a checkpoint. This can be done from Eclipse, from a command-line, or from the old Simics stand-alone GUI. Whether on Windows or Linux host, the same options are available. No matter how you do it, the end result is the same. The same Simics engine is used in all cases, interpreting the startup script in the same way.

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Confusion Abounds as Buzzwords Converge on Defining Internet of Things

By Gareth Noyes

Trends seem to have a life of their own, especially in technology. Clusters of thoughts and ideas converge to re-frame an idea or define something completely new and then buzzwords are born. But before they reach critical mass and gain widespread acceptance, they often go through painful phases where the same words are used, but we get lost between concepts and definitions. However, when good ideas solve real business problems, the buzzword sticks.

Take ‘The Cloud’ for example. Back at Oracle OpenWorld in 2008, Larry Ellison was quoted as saying:

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

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Reliability….the key constant in network transformation

By Jessica Schieve 

Wind River recently conducted a webinar on the topic of network transformation and the growing trend around building greater intelligence.   The webinar discussed the results of a survey we commissioned through Light Reading exploring the different facets of network intelligence: packet acceleration, content inspection, flow analysis and traffic shaping, and network virtualization.  It was one of our highest attended events in recent months.  An archived version of the webinar can be heard here.

The webinar highlighted three significant results from the survey 1) advancements in multicore technology are making network transformation and network intelligence possible 2) the time is right for software to pave the way for higher network performance, greater security, and new services that take advantage of network intelligence, and 3) the majority of network equipment providers want a common software platform that can be used for multiple products. 

During the webinar we polled the audience on what they consider their greatest challenge in adopting a software-enabled network intelligent strategy.   Here are the results of the poll:

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Inspecting and Reconfiguring a Target in Simics 4.8

By Jakob Engblom 

As we said in the first blog post on Simics 4.8, a really big new feature is the System Editor function. The system editor combines two functions into a single view, both the exploration of an existing target as well as the modification and even construction of a new target from existing pieces. A demo video is available on the Wind River channel on YouTube, and read on for more information on how it works.

The basic view that the System Editor provides is the Simics component hierarchy of a target system. The components are used to organize a target in a manner that is very similar to how the target hardware system is organized, including the encapsulation of chips on boards, PCI cards into PCI slots, and functional clusters inside SoCs.

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Analytics and the ‘Internet of Things’

By Gareth Noyes

Analytics has become a major buzzword these days, whether in the realm of connected devices, the Internet of Things, web analytics or big data business analytics.  In the context of the Internet of Things, I thought I’d share some observations on different analytics paradigms and use cases.

One common analytics model is what could be termed “store-and-analyze-later,” where massive amounts of data are streamed up to cloud servers and Hadoop clusters for later analysis. The problem with this approach, especially given the ever increasing amounts of data, is that it doesn’t scale, the amount of data quickly overwhelms our ability to make sense of it. Compare that to a model where intelligence (gained from analytics) is tailored to the use case and system topology, leading to “intelligence where and when you need it”-- the notion of multi-tiered intelligence where edge devices have a configurable amount of autonomy and decision making authority, and no longer act as “dumb data generators.”

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VxWorks: Delivering on the Promise of Multicore

By Bill Graham

Wind River had a big week on the multicore front which included a significant presence at last week’s Multicore Developer Conference. In addition to keynoting the event, Wind River delivered two presentations on making the most out of multicore hardware platforms. 

A key takeaway from the event is that the hardware has come a long way -- in fact, we demonstrated VxWorks on the latest generation hardware such as the Freescale QorIQ T4240, a 12 core, 24 thread device that is a processing powerhouse. Also of note – we demonstrated the identical software on our Wind River Simics virtual system simulation of the Freescale QorIQ T4240.

What was critical about our message at the conference was that your runtime platform choice makes a big difference in terms of the amount of flexibility you have architecting your system. The goal of these sessions was to illustrate how architecture choice is key to maximizing the processing power provided by these new hardware platforms.

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Collborating using Simics Recording Checkpoints

By Jakob Engblom

One of the main themes of the Simics 4.8 release is the use of Simics to collaborate between team members, teams, and organizations. To facilitate this, Simics checkpoints have been extended with significant new metadata capabilities as well as the ability to record a simulation session and communicate the recording as part of a checkpoint. Checkpointing can really transform how developers and testers and users communicate issues in their systems, and the new checkpointing features and metadata makes the mechanism even more powerful. We have a video up on YouTube demonstrating this Simics feature. 

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Simics 4.8 is Here

By Jakob Engblom

Simics 4.8 is now generally available for old and new users to enjoy. I will be doing a series of blog posts going into the details on what is new and improved in this release. Simics 4.8 represents a significant improvement in the Simics user interface and collaboration features, as well as tweaks to the simulator performance, debugger, and modeling workflow, so there  is quite a bit to talk about. We start off with an overview of the news.

The most visible new functions in Simics 4.8 are found in the Eclipse user interface. We have added several new views and features to help users gain insight into their simulations, debug more efficiently, ease device modeling, and communicate within and between teams. We have also added some significant new performance technologies and more collaboration features to Simics checkpoints.

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Northrop Grumman X-47B UCAS-D Running on Wind River VxWorks Catapults from Aircraft Carrier

By Chip Downing

Today, the Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned aircraft achieved a successful catapult launch from the deck of the USS George H.W. Bush carrier, the first of its kind in aviation history.  This marks a very proud day for Wind River knowing that our VxWorks real-time operating system is a key technology for this aircraft, developed as part of the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) program.

Northrop Grumman's X-47B is a tailless, strike fighter-sized unmanned aircraft currently under development for carrier operations. VxWorks serves as the foundation for the Common Core System, the backbone of UCAS-D computers, networks, and interfacing electronics on the X-47B. Built on VxWorks, Northrop Grumman engineers were able to rapidly create, deploy and maintain the safety-critical control system. 

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