A Bare PC Text Based Browser Presented by Dr. Ramesh K. Karne Department of Computer and Information Sciences Towson University Towson, MD 21252, USA (Authors: Saleh Almutairi, Ramesh K. Karne, Alexander L. Wijesinha) rkarne@towson.edu http://www.baremachinecomputing.com

History Started in 2001 Motivated by complexity and obsolescence Frustrated by too many environments Initially funded by NSF grants Over 50 publications and 20 doctoral dissertations Started from scratch and built all BMC code and over a dozen complex applications over the years

Related Work Exokernel Bare Metal Linux Nano and Micro Kernels Lean kernels Sandboxing Palacio and Kitten IO-Lite Lean Kernels Embedded Systems Many Text Only Browsers

What is a Bare Machine Computing (BMC)? A computer application(s) run on a bare computing device (such as a PC) The computing device consists of CPU, Memory, User interfaces such as (Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Network card) Application(s) are self contained, self managed The box containing the computing device is known as a bare machine The concept is applicable any computing device

BMC Characteristics A Bare Machine is: Ownerless Valueless, no valuable resources in the bare box Uses detachable or network storage Bootable, loadable and controllable by user application(s) Application(s) are stored on a detachable storage device such as a flash drive There is nothing to damage in the bare machine, other than physical vandalism Super secure, ultimate security for application(s) A bare machine can be placed any place, accessed by anyone without ownership A bare machine application is stable, not prone to obsolescence, contains code that does not depend on other computing environments It is a bare as well as BMC programming concepts A bare machine application(s) are totally user controlled and closed systems.

What is a bare PC Browser System? Runs on a x86 compatible PCs, can be extended to other CPU architectures by writing direct API It runs with Intel NICs (some of them) It is a single application Text only at this point, no graphics No TLS , No DNS No OS vulnerabilities Closed system

BMC System Architecture

TCP Client Protocol Interfaces

Web Browser Interface Menu

Processes

Task Interactions

TCP Control Flow

Video Memory

Parser State Transition Diagram

Web site accessed from bare browser

LADBS Web Site in Windows Browser

LADBS Web Site in bare Browser

LADBS Lines in Windows Browser

LADBS Lines in bare Browser

Design Challenges Broad knowledge for a programmer Device driver knowledge System and application programming Debugging bare code Reducing semantic-gap between application and hardware Integrating with other bare PC applications Connecting to secure servers Parsing a variety of browser data Multiple screens Different NICs

Further Research Graphics TLS DNS Other NICs Other Architectures More functionalities

Questions?