Re: Call for GSoC and Outreachy project ideas for summer 2022

[Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 9 Feb 2022 at 14:50, Alexander Graf <graf@amazon.com> wrote:
> On 28.01.22 16:47, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> > Dear QEMU, KVM, and rust-vmm communities,
> > QEMU will apply for Google Summer of Code 2022
> > (https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/) and has been accepted into
> > Outreachy May-August 2022 (https://www.outreachy.org/). You can now
> > submit internship project ideas for QEMU, KVM, and rust-vmm!
> >
> > If you have experience contributing to QEMU, KVM, or rust-vmm you can
> > be a mentor. It's a great way to give back and you get to work with
> > people who are just starting out in open source.
> >
> > Please reply to this email by February 21st with your project ideas.
> >
> > Good project ideas are suitable for remote work by a competent
> > programmer who is not yet familiar with the codebase. In
> > addition, they are:
> > - Well-defined - the scope is clear
> > - Self-contained - there are few dependencies
> > - Uncontroversial - they are acceptable to the community
> > - Incremental - they produce deliverables along the way
> >
> > Feel free to post ideas even if you are unable to mentor the project.
> > It doesn't hurt to share the idea!
>
>
> I have one that I'd absolutely *love* to see but not gotten around
> implementing myself yet :)
>
>
> Summary:
>
> Implement -M nitro-enclave in QEMU
>
> Nitro Enclaves are the first widely adopted implementation of hypervisor
> assisted compute isolation. Similar to technologies like SGX, it allows
> to spawn a separate context that is inaccessible by the parent Operating
> System. This is implemented by "giving up" resources of the parent VM
> (CPU cores, memory) to the hypervisor which then spawns a second vmm to
> execute a completely separate virtual machine. That new VM only has a
> vsock communication channel to the parent and has a built-in lightweight
> TPM.
>
> One big challenge with Nitro Enclaves is that due to its roots in
> security, there are very few debugging / introspection capabilities.
> That makes OS bringup, debugging and bootstrapping very difficult.
> Having a local dev&test environment that looks like an Enclave, but is
> 100% controlled by the developer and introspectable would make life a
> lot easier for everyone working on them. It also may pave the way to see
> Nitro Enclaves adopted in VM environments outside of EC2.
>
> This project will consist of adding a new machine model to QEMU that
> mimics a Nitro Enclave environment, including the lightweight TPM, the
> vsock communication channel and building firmware which loads the
> special "EIF" file format which contains kernel, initramfs and metadata
> from a -kernel image.
>
> Links:
>
> https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/nitro/nitro-enclaves/
> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200921121732.44291-10-andraprs@amazon.com/T/
>
> Details:
>
> Skill level: intermediate - advanced (some understanding of QEMU machine
> modeling would be good)
> Language: C
> Mentor: Maybe me (Alexander Graf), depends on timelines and holiday
> season. Let's find an intern first - I promise to find a mentor then :)
> Suggested by: Alexander Graf
>
>
> Note: I don't know enough about rust-vmm's debugging capabilities. If it
> has gdbstub and a local UART that's easily usable, the project might be
> perfectly viable under its umbrella as well - written in Rust then of
> course.

It would be great to have an open source Enclave environment for
development and testing in QEMU.

Could you add a little more detail about the tasks involved. Something
along the lines of:
- Implement a device model for the TPM device (link to spec or driver
code below)
- Implement vsock device (or is this virtio-mmio vsock?)
- Add a test for the TPM device
- Add an acceptance test that boots a minimal EIF payload

This will give candidates more keywords and links to research this project.

Thanks,
Stefan