̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Richard Mortier

Making operating systems safer and faster with ‘unikernels’

sc604 — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Specialised computer software components to improve the security, speed and scale of data processing in cloud computing are being developed by a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge spin-out company. ̽��ֱ��company, Unikernel Systems, which was formed by staff and postdoctoral researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� Computer Laboratory, has recently been acquired by San-Francisco based software company Docker Inc.

Unikernels are small, potentially transient computer modules specialised to undertake a single task at the point in time when it is needed. Because of their reduced size, they are far more secure than traditional operating systems, and can be started up and shut down quickly and cheaply, providing flexibility and further security.

They are likely to become increasingly used in applications where security and efficiency are vital, such as systems storing personal data and applications for the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) – internet-connected appliances and consumer products.

“Unikernels provide the means to run the same application code on radically different environments from the public cloud to IoT devices,” said Dr Richard Mortier of the Computer Laboratory, one of the company’s advisors. “This allows decisions about where to run things to be revisited in the light of experience - providing greater flexibility and resilience. It also means software on those IoT devices is going to be a lot more reliable."

Recent years have seen a huge increase in the amount of data that is collected, stored and processed, a trend that will only continue as increasing numbers of devices are connected to the internet. Most commercial data storage and processing now takes place within huge datacentres run by specialist providers, rather than on individual machines and company servers; the individual elements of this system are obscured to end users within the ‘cloud’. One of the technologies that has been instrumental in making this happen is virtual machines.

Normally, a virtual machine (VM) runs just like a real computer, with its own virtual operating system – just as your desktop computer might run Windows. However, a single real machine can run many VMs concurrently. VMs are general purpose, able to handle a wide range of jobs from different types of user, and capable of being moved across real machines within datacentres in response to overall user demand. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ��’s Computer Laboratory started research on virtualisation in 1999, and the Xen virtual machine monitor that resulted now provides the basis for much of the present-day cloud.

Although VMs have driven the development of the cloud (and greatly reduced energy consumption), their inherent flexibility can come at a cost if their virtual operating systems are the generic Linux or Windows systems. These operating systems are large and complex, they have significant memory footprints, and they take time to start up each time they are required. Security is also an issue, because of their relatively large ‘attack surface’.

Given that many VMs are actually used to undertake a single function, (e.g. acting as a company database), recent research has shifted to minimising complexity and improving security by taking advantage of the narrow functionality. And this is where unikernels come in.

Researchers at the Computer Laboratory started restructuring VMs into flexible modular components in 2009, as part of the RCUK-funded MirageOS project. These specialised modules – or unikernels - are in effect the opposite of generic VMs. Each one is designed to undertake a single task; they are small, simple and quick, using just enough code to enable the relevant application or process to run (about 4% of a traditional operating system according to one estimate).

̽��ֱ��small size of unikernels also lends considerable security advantages, as they present a much smaller ‘surface’ to malicious attack, and also enable companies to separate out different data processing tasks in order to limit the effects of any security breach that does occur. Given that resource use within the cloud is metered and charged, they also provide considerable cost savings to end users.

By the end of last year, the unikernel technology arising from MirageOS was sufficiently advanced that the team, led by Dr. Anil Madhavapeddy, decided to found a start-up company. ̽��ֱ��company, Unikernel Systems, was recently acquired by San Francisco-based Docker Inc. to accelerate the development and broad adoption of the technology, now envisaged as a critical element in the future of the Internet of Things.

“This brings together one of the most significant developments in operating systems technology of recent years, with one of the most dynamic startups that has already revolutionised the way we use cloud computing. This link-up will truly allow us all to “rethink cloud infrastructure”, said Balraj Singh, co-founder and CEO of Unikernel Systems.

“This acquisition shows that the Computer Laboratory continues to produce innovations that find their way into mainstream developments. It also shows the power of open source development to have impact and to be commercially successful”, said Professor Andy Hopper, Head of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

Technology to improve the security, speed and scale of data processing in age of the Internet of Things is being developed by a Cambridge spin-out company.

This acquisition shows the power of open source development to have impact and to be commercially successful.

Andy Hopper

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

I always feel like somebody’s watching me…

sc604 — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 08:00:34 +0000

It’s a fact of modern life – with every click, every tweet, every Facebook Like, we hand over information about ourselves to organisations who are desperate to know all of our secrets, in the hope that those secrets can be used to sell us something.

Companies have been collecting every possible scrap of information from their customers since long before the internet age, but with more powerful computers, cheaper storage and ubiquitous online use, the methods organisations use to gather information about people have become ever-more sophisticated. And sometimes those organisations know us better than our own families or friends.

For example, several years ago, data analysis tools used by the US retailer Target had become so precise that they were able to determine, with astonishing accuracy, whether a woman was pregnant and how far along she was, based on her purchase of certain products. And in one particularly embarrassing incident, Target knew that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father did, much to her father’s displeasure.

“What Target learned from that incident is that marketing too accurately can really make people squeamish,” says Professor Jon Crowcroft of the ̽��ֱ��’s Computer Laboratory. “But if they made their marketing a little less accurate by increasing the amount of privacy they give their customers, they found they can still retain or increase their customer base without making people feel as if they’re being spied on.”

Crowcroft’s research is in the area of ‘privacy by design’ – systems that allow us to live in the digital world and protect our privacy at the same time. As the concept of the Internet of Things – internet-connected washing machines, toasters and televisions – becomes reality, Crowcroft insists that privacy by design is needed to address the massive power imbalance that occurs when our personal data is shared with, and sold by, corporations, governments and other organisations.

But privacy by design doesn’t mean disconnecting from the online world and putting on a tinfoil hat – far from it. “There’s already a lot of data stored about each and every one of us – the things we buy, the food we eat, the health issues we have – and for each of these market segments, there are perfectly legitimate uses for that data,” adds Crowcroft. “Collecting healthcare data is fantastically useful for tracking pandemics, preventative care, more- efficient treatment, public health – those are all perfectly reasonable and positive uses for big data. At the same time, most sites gather information in order to target ads more accurately, and most people are actually okay with that. So the question then becomes, what is privacy by design?”

“What we’re trying to do is develop processing frameworks that would allow this data to be useful and to be used, without the somewhat creepy feeling that you’re constantly being watched,” says Crowcroft’s colleague Dr Richard Mortier.

̽��ֱ��type of system that Crowcroft and Mortier envision is one in which the user has the scope to allow access to their data on a case-by-case basis, rather than it be harvested whether they like it or not: computations are performed where the data is gathered, and the results are pushed back to the organisation that wants the data.

“We can change the big data problem completely by moving where the data is processed,” explains Mortier. “Rather than having systems where all of the data is gathered in some huge central location and processed, if you reconstruct the system so that the data is processed in the same place it’s gathered, individuals would be able to take some of the control of their information back from corporations and surveillance organisations. Instead of one huge central processing node, we want to see billions of smaller nodes, which would make information quicker to access, and could potentially be stored
at lower overall cost.”

Crowcroft and Mortier have designed and partially built systems where a person’s data stays local to them, and they can have the option to decide what is shared and with whom. For example, a patient can share their healthcare data with their GP, but the GP would have to get authorisation from the patient before sharing that data with a pharmaceutical company.

“People realise they’re being marketed to, but I don’t think they realise the scale of it – it really is a hidden menace,” says Crowcroft. “ ̽��ֱ��point is that we could build systems that could stop that completely, and re-enable it on the basis of a level playing field. We want to see systems where people have agency over their data, giving them the ability to allow or prevent certain types of access.”

Contrary to what some people may assume about the nature of digital life, adds Crowcroft, the vast majority of people highly value their own privacy. He points to the launch and then recall of Google Glass, a wearable computer worn like eyeglasses. “People started wearing these things into restaurants and other diners wouldn’t put up with it, because they didn’t want to be recorded while eating their lunch – it really creeped people out,” he says.

“And that’s in a public space: imagine the same sort of thing happening in a private space. It’s about the asymmetry and the idea that this is being done to you and you have no comeback. ̽��ֱ��problem with digital infrastructures is you don’t see them, and to a certain extent companies depend on people not understanding them – we can build systems where there are mechanisms through which they can be understood.”

Crowcroft and Mortier recognise that they’ll never convince everyone to ditch cloud computing and switch to a decentralised system. But that isn’t their goal. “It takes a while to show that new ways of doing things can really work,” says Crowcroft. “If these sorts of systems become a reasonably widely used alternative, it will go a long way towards keeping companies and cloud storage providers honest. ̽��ֱ��very small number of providers leads to the exploitation of the network effect, where they have a strong monopolistic position over a certain type of data. And monopolies are not good for economies. If a decentralised system is more ethical, enough people using it may incentivise the big providers to be more ethical too.”

Inset image: Professor Jon Crowcroft and Dr Richard Mortier ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge).

What power can individuals have over their data when their every move online is being tracked? Researchers at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory are building new systems that shift the power back to individual users, and could make personal data faster to access and at much lower cost.

We're trying to develop processing frameworks that would allow this data to be useful and to be used, without the somewhat creepy feeling that you’re constantly being watched

Richard Mortier

̽��ֱ��District

Eye

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes