Experience with the implementation of AES256 on L4 microkernel using DROPS (BID) environment

Abstract

Microkernels have been developed to minimize the size of software that needs to run in privileged CPU mode. It provides a minimal set of general hardware abstractions and able to implement an operating system with a high level of reliability and security. In L4 microkernel, the creation of address spaces, thread and inter process communication as fundamental abstraction is important in the development and running of any process. One way to create a process application is by using Dresden Real-Time Operating System (DROPS) as a collection of packages on L4 environment. L4 exist with various versions and implementations and L4/Fiasco is mentioned to be the most stable version currently available. This paper describes the implementation of a simple encryption called AES256 on L4. It details the process and flow of setting up the environment, developing the application as well as executing the successfully compiled binaries.