An incremental path towards a safer OS kernel

Abstract

Linux has become the de-facto operating system of our age, but its vulnerabilities are a constant threat to service availability, user privacy, and data integrity. While one might scrap Linux and start over, the cost of that would be prohibitive due to Linux's ubiquitous deployment. In this paper, we propose an alternative, incremental route to a safer Linux through proper modularization and gradual replacement module by module. We lay out the research challenges and potential solutions for this route, and discuss the open questions ahead.