Protecting Zephyr Against Memory Safety Vulnerabilities With the New CHERI Hardware Architecture

Explore how the CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) hardware architecture extension can protect the Zephyr operating system against memory safety vulnerabilities in this lightning talk from the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit. Learn about the urgent industry need to eliminate software-based memory safety vulnerabilities from product lines, starting with underlying operating systems and extending to dependent applications. Discover the 15-year development history of CHERI technology and its backing by the newly formed CHERI Alliance, which includes major industry players like ARM, Google, and Microsoft, alongside academic institutions and government organizations. Gain insights into why now is the optimal time for Zephyr to adopt this emerging hardware architecture extension, understand the latest CHERI technology developments, and examine the ongoing work to provide CHERI-RISC-V architecture support specifically for the Zephyr operating system.