Simplex

Simplex simplifies working with Intel's Memory Protection Extensions (MPX) in ways unforseen by the architects.

• System Requirements
  • Linux
  • MacOS
• Installation
  • Prerequisites
  • Build Simplex
• Usage
• Paper

System Requirements

Foremost, your computer must have a CPU supporting MPX. Intel began support for MPX with sixth-generation Intel Core processors as well as other processors with Skylake and Broxton microarchitectures (c. 2015). You can verify your CPU support by running one of the following commands:

Linux

Shell lscpu | grep mpx

MacOS

Shell sysctl -n machdep.cpu.features | grep MPX

Installation

Prerequisites

Install prerequisite software from your package manager.

• Aptitude shell sudo apt update sudo apt install bzip2 cmake curl git libelf-dev build-essential
• Homebrew shell brew update brew install bzip2 cmake curl git libelf-dev

Since we patch the source code for the following projects in our evaluations, we suggest getting the sources rather than using a package manager.

| Name | Version | |:----------------------------------------------|:--------| | SPEC CPU2017 | 1.0.2 | | OpenSSL | 1.1.0g |

Build Simplex

shell git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/bingseclab/simplex.git cd simplex mkdir -p build install && cd build cmake .. -G"Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../install cmake --build . --target install

In addition to respecting CUnit's and Hayai's CMake options, the following CMake options are supported:

| Variable | Description | Default | |-------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------|----------| | SIMPLEXBUILDEVALS:BOOL | Build Simplex's evaluations. If enabled, Hayai is built. | OFF | | SIMPLEXBUILDTESTS:BOOL | Build Simplex's test suite. If enabled, CUnit is built. | OFF |

Usage

Add $(SIMPLEX_ROOT)/install/simplex/lib to your library path and $(SIMPLEX_ROOT)/install/simplex/include to your include path directory options. Add -lsimplex to your linker options. For example, using the Clang C compiler:

shell clang [options...] \ -I$(SIMPLEX_ROOT)/install/simplex/include \ -L$(SIMPLEX_ROOT)/install/simplex/lib \ [-o outfile] infile... \ -lsimplex

Paper

• Proceedings website
• Full paper
• Citation

Please cite as:

@InProceedings{10.1007/978-3-031-22295-5_12, author="Cole, Matthew and Prakash, Aravind", editor="Reiser, Hans P. and Kyas, Marcel", title="Simplex: Repurposing Intel Memory Protection Extensions for Secure Storage", booktitle="Secure IT Systems", year="2022", publisher="Springer International Publishing", address="Cham", pages="215--233", isbn="978-3-031-22295-5" }