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Qubes Power ISA Port Statement of Work

Project Objectives and Reasoning:

The objectives of this project is to port the Xen Hypervisor to the Power Architecture so that QubesOS can run on Power ISA CPUs.  The purpose behind this objective is that QubesOS (in our collective opinion) is one of the most secure operating systems available today, due to its open source nature and its security by compartmentalization.  However, QubesOS today can only run on the x86 instruction set, which is unauditable and insecure firmware.  This represents a serious security concern; both theoretical and historical.  Firmware affects all code above it (the BIOS, bootloader, kernel, OS, and all applications).  No matter how secure those segments of the computer are, if the firmware is malicious, all levels above are fully compromised as well.  The Vault 7 CIA leaks are a perfect example of this. 

Therefore, we currently can't consider QubesOS secure at all.  However, The Power Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is completely open source, and currently has open source 'implementations' (SBC's) on the market. This project would enable users to run QubesOS on a secure CPU and auditable firmware.  Unlike with x86, hardware initialization firmware, boot firmware, and management firmware are all open source.  In addition, all the family of CPU speculative execution vulnerabilities are not successful on Power CPUs.


End Goal:

The end goal of completed project will have the same user experience, security, and features of Qubes 4.1.0.  However, please note that this is not what payment is contingent on.


Current Status:

Funds available as of May 6th, 2022:
I (Robert Spigler) have 1 bitcoin & Blackbird Bundle available
@Rudd-O has pledged 0.5 bitcoin (confirmed)
@leo-lb has pledged 0.8 btc (need to confirm)
Total 2.3 btc

We have made a Mailing List and Matrix Room:
qubes_port@lists.riseup.net; https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/qubes_port
https://matrix.to/#/#qubes-port:matrix.org


Developer:
Timothy Pearson (Raptor Engineering) tpearson@raptorengineering.com 

Contributors:
Robert Spigler (RobertSpigler.com)	Management/Fundraising

Olivier Lambert (olivierlambert) is doing project mgmt via Marc, but also acting as a liaison between Qubes, Xen Project and OpenPOWER.

Marc Ungeschikts (marcungeschikts) from Vates helping with project management.

Piotr Król (3mdeb, OpenPOWER firmware: hostboot, coreboot etc.)

Simon Gaiser (Qubes/ITL)

Thierry Laurion (Insurgo) @insurgo:matrix.org insurgo@riseup.net

Demi Marie Obenour (Invisible Things Lab)

Alyssa Ross (Spectrum) (Matrix: @qyliss:fairydust.space, Mail: hi@alyssa.is, IRC: qyliss (libera, oftc)

Marek Marczykowski-Górecki (ITL) (Matrix: @marmarek:matrix.org, IRC: marmarek (libera, oftc, through matrix anyway), marmarek@invisiblethingslab.com) 

Frédéric Pierret (fepitre) (ITL) (IRC: fepitre/fpierret (librera, oftc))



Milestones:

Phase 1: 0.65BTC.  Build tooling, minimal boot to serial console of a Xen kernel on a single core (no SMP, missing drivers, core locked at 100% power).

Phase 1.5: 0.65BTC: SMP, some driver integration (possible power state management?) required to get a usable system in preparation for Phase 2



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