Microsoft Project Cerberus

2020: Disclosure of source codes

On May 12, 2020 Microsoft announced opening of source codes of the Cerberus project which purpose consists in protection of servers in data centers. The corporation will publish architecture of the platform, reference architecture, a firmware and system processes of Cerberus. This step was taken within an initiative of Open Compute Project which was announced in 2011.

The Cerberus project developed together with Intel, AMD, Broadcom, Nuvoton Technology, Mellanox and NXP includes the cryptographic chip intended for detecting of the attacks directed to the microcontroller of the server in which there is a firmware. There a number of software tools is included.^[1]

Microsoft opened source codes of the equipment and software for the data centers

It allows to protect the equipment from harmful actions of insiders with the administrator rights; actions of malefactors at physical contact with the equipment; the attacks of hackers and the malicious software operating vulnerabilities in the operating system, applications or a hypervisor; the attacks performed at production phases and followings of servers to the customer and also to protect servers from installation of the compromised firmwares.

The essence of work of Cerberus consists in continuous verification of all addresses on the bus SPI from a host to memory in which the firmware is stored. It provides integrity of all components of a firmware during preloading, loading and work of the performing environment, said in the description of Microsoft.

As work of Cerberus does not depend on the central processor and architecture of input-output, the solution is suitable for servers of different producers and will save relevance in the long term, consider in corporation.

Opening of source codes of Cerberus — which in Microsoft is called "the first in the industry solution for protection against the attacks on firmwares of servers" — will allow to accelerate development of the project as and technology a set of the new parties will be able to enter the contribution to improvement of architecture, consider in corporation.

Microsoft calculates what in commercial products of Cerberus will appear until the end of 2020.^[2]

Also Microsoft opened source codes of Project Olympus - construction of the server for DPCs. The company unrolled Project Olympus within Azure together with the family of Fv2 virtual machines.

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