GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC) Vol.4 No.3, October 2015 DOI 10.7603/s40601-014-0018-4

A Framework for the Implementation of Secure Bare-Based Web- System

Patrick Appiah-Kubi, Anthony Tsetse, and Alae Loukili

Received 29 Jun 2015 Accepted 27 Jul 2015

Abstract - systems have being developed for services to ensure email exchanges. Figure 1 presents a different OS-based platforms. These OS-based systems pictorial illustration of email exchanges between the present their own benefits and treats. Framework and white various email services. papers for developing these systems are available but there is no specific framework available for the implementation of user such systems on Bare PC. Implementation of such systems on agent a Bare PC poses daunting challenges and innovative HTTP/TLS Request SMTP/POP3 opportunities that are revolutionary in server designs. Web server / Building such systems for security could even be more Mail Agent challenging. Secure Webmail systems are complex, large and require intricate components to develop. As a result, a lean system was developed for this research. The lean concept also SQL Queries helps to build small protocol suite, intertwining of protocols, limited requirement space, simple user interfaces and minimal design options. The paper provides a detail framework for the design and implementation, experimental setup and the results of experiments conducted. Performance Database is evaluated by measuring the processing time, throughput, the CPU Utilization and load distribution. The results show Figure 1: Conventional Email Exchanges that the performance of the Bare PC Webmail server is significantly better than that of the OS-based servers. In situations where dynamic HTTP requests are sent Keywords-Bare PC; Application Object; HTTP; PHP to the Webmail Server for processing/parsing coupled parser; TLS; SMTP; . with a secured request using static or dynamic TLS, the complexity of Webmail system increases significantly. The design of the Bare PC-based web-email system was I. INTRODUCTION as a result of experiences gained in developing the Bare PC TLS, HTTP, SMTP and POP3 protocols. A Bare PC Webmail is a web-based email service that allows Web server interfaces with any commercial users to access their email through a instead adhering to the client requests and their interfaces. It does of using desktop email clients (such as Outlook, not have any control on the client user interfaces. The , and ). It allows Bare PC webmail system developed is user friendly to users to access their email account from any Internet Bare PC environment as the functionality and complexity enabled device located anywhere, unlike the application- can be dealt with at the server level. This is because; based email system. A conventional secure webmail webmail system servers generate and serve all Web pages system uses protocols such as simple mail transfer to the client thus allowing the designer to control the protocol (SMTP), (POP3) or internet design of the system. message access protocol (IMAP), hypertext transfer The Bare PC webmail architecture is based on protocol (HTTP) and transport layer security (TLS), to threading techniques, delay/resume lists, and task stack exchange messages. These protocols provide independent

DOI: 10.5176/2251-3043_4.3.333

©The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access by the GSTF 71 GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC) Vol.4 No.3, October 2015

mechanisms to provide efficient memory utilization and the x86 systems[7] have extended OS kernels allowing process control. It contains its own data execution applications to run guest plug-ins on the host OS. However knowledge and control, and does not require any other none of the above proposed techniques propose a complete software support to run. Currently, the Bare PC Webmail elimination of all OS support except for the Bare PC system run on Intel Pentium 4 (or above) based PCs and paradigm. The strength of Bare PC applications is derived only requires common general-purpose hardware from its simplicity, smaller code, design by obscurity, including USB-based bootable devices, network interface design for longevity, and inherent security. The Bare box cards, and USB-based persistent storage. The system is can be used to run a variety of applications. The also not vulnerable to attacks targeting an underlying OS. Application Object (AO) is self-contained and it belongs Bare PC applications are built to be secure since all to an owner, which can be made secure at the AO level. underlying OS vulnerabilities are eliminated at design As the AOs are application centric, it does not require all level. The TLS protocol added to the design enhances OS components as needed in today’s OS. Only necessary security when sending and receiving messages. Since a hardware interfaces and controls are included in the AO Bare PC server application is self-supporting, it is unlike thus making the AO small in size, simple in design and its OS-based counterpart that relies on services provided development. An AO may constitute a single application by the OS. For example, a Bare PC server application such as Webmail server or it may consist of composite contains lean versions of the necessary protocols, manages applications including: Webmail server, Web Browser and memory, schedules tasks on the CPU, and directly a Text-editor. Applications like the Web server[8], Email accesses the underlying hardware. Furthermore, the Server[9][10] VoIP[11][12] and TLS on web server[13] application layer and transport layer protocol code is have been built on Bare PC and these applications intertwined within the code for the server application. demonstrated significant improvements in performance There is no socket interface for applications in a Bare PC compared to other commercial systems. These server, and the intertwined parts of the code and the applications uncovered the unique features of the Bare PC underlying task structure can differ from application to architecture and served as the bases for the design and application. Protocol intertwining reduces inter-layer implementation of the Bare PC Webmail Server. communication overhead compared to a conventional OS- Current Webmail systems such as Atmail[14], based TCP/IP protocol stack, but complicates the design Petmail[20], MailTraq[15], Axigen[16], Afterlogic[17], and implementation of the server. Bare PC applications do Squirrelmail[18], Facemail[19], icewarp[21], not use a local disk (they only require detachable mass Hexamail[22], all focus on OS-based systems. Some of storage). The application directly communicates with the these systems are designed for high performance, while hardware (in this case an X86-based CPU). This approach others such as Cisco’s Webex[23] are designed for high can be used to build pervasive devices, gateways, routers, reliability and availability. Techniques to improve or sensors that host small efficient bare PC applications. performance of the Open Webmail system are discussed in The paper is organized as follows, section I is the [24]. Email server architecture, which is based on a spam introduction, II covers related work, III covers architecture workload and optimized with respect to concurrency, I/O and design, IV covers experimental analysis and V is the and IP address lookups, is shown to significantly improve conclusion. performance and throughput. The design and implementation of an email pseudonym server providing anonymity to reduce server threats is capable of reducing II. RELATED WORK risks due to OS-based vulnerabilities. Some performance and design details of Webmail system is described in [24]. The first attempt to minimize Operating systems The security aspects of Webmail systems have been (OS) functionality was proposed in the Exokernel[1][2] studied by many authors [25][26]. Webmail systems use architecture where minimum OS functionality was used HTTPS/TLS protocol to protect email messages in transit. to obtain core processes such as kernel system processes. However, all existing TLS-capable Webmail systems are Studies such as Microkernel, OS-Kit[3], Bare-metal OS based, and there is no TLS-capable Webmail system , IO-Lite[4], Tiny OS[5] and other approaches have that runs on a Bare PC. There are alternate approaches to tried to reduce the interaction of OS or bypass OS to gain email security. S/MIME [25] provides encryption, efficiency in the system. In [6], Linux is used to enable authentication, message integrity and non-repudiation for direct communication with the hardware by reducing the MIME messages exchanged between users (i.e., end-to- OS reliability. More recently, sandboxing techniques on end). The design and implementation of a secure email

©The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access by the GSTF 72 GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC) Vol.4 No.3, October 2015

system that provides encryption and signing, and 21 Resume ETH IP TCP additional features such as elimination of spam and prevention of harmful attachments is described. The 19 20 NIC RCV implementation of a secure Webmail system that uses Driver Task CallerID for access is discussed in [26]. Operating System 22 STD 5 (OS-based) systems are based on some sort of centralized POP3 Object resource manager or controller to provide hardware 18 6 SMTP abstractions to applications. The Bare PC previously Object N referred to as dispersed Operating Systems computing 7 I HTTP (DOSC)[27] proposes an extreme end of the spectrum in Network Object 8 OS for building computer applications where there is no TLS centralized resource manager or controller running in the Object machine. Applications[28] in Bare PC directly TCP Table communicate with hardware (no need for abstraction (TCB) (Migratory layers) and the computer is made Bare (no hard disk, no Entries) 13 Running resident software, except BIOS). The Bare PC approach 17 Task M is application centric and provides full control to the Bare 16 U 4 X PC . Bare PC applications referred to as Delay List application object (AO)[28] contain all the necessary 15 Resume List Main Task application, data execution knowledge, and control. There 3 is no need for the AO to depend on any other software or 14 Menu / Tasks Loader vendor specific products. The AO is built using a single Stacks 2 programming language and works on a given CPU Boot Program architecture base such as X86. These AOs can also be 1 written to work with any other CPU architectures. POP3 SMTP HTTP TLS Task Pool Task Pool Task Pool Task Pool 12 11 10 9

III. ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN Figure 2: Bare PC Webmail System Architecture A. Architecture Figure 2 shows the architectural design of the Bare The server architecture is supported by common PC Webmail server. For referencing purpose, numeric general-purpose hardware including USB-based bootable labels are assigned to items within the figure. The server devices, network interface cards, USB-based persistent is initiated on a Bare PC by a boot program (1) which is storage, and Intel x86 based PCs. However, this server can read from a USB-bootable device. The initial sector be extended to run on other Intel processor architectures. contains a bootstrap loader which loads the menu program The internal architectural design is based on threading (2), which then loads the AO. The AO starts by initializing techniques, delay/resume lists, and task stack mechanisms various data structures, parameters, tasks, and objects. to provide efficient memory utilization and process Control is then passed to the Main Task (3). The basic Bare control. However, the architecture does not make use of PC data structures used by the Main Task include a any components of an OS or any other vendor software. Delayed List (16), Resume List (15) and a Multiplexor Likewise, the compilation and execution of the Bare PC mechanism (4) that switches between Received Tasks (20) application object for the Webmail server does not make and Resume List Tasks (HTTP, SMTP, POP3, TLS) and use of any system or API libraries of the compiler which selects a running task (13). This running task can be would require an OS. The Bare PC approach only uses few suspended and returned to the Delayed List (16) when it is BIOS function calls to invoke the timer, and reading not being run. The Main Task checks for delayed tasks, device addresses from the Intel Hub Controller. whenever it is free and place them in the resume list. When Eventually, these BIOS calls and direct hardware a response arrives for a Delayed List task, a Resume () interfaces can be driven to CPU to provide an AO brings the Delayed List task into the Resume List. A TCP execution. All other interrupts are managed by the AO as Table (TCB, 17) is used to store relevant information software interrupts or direct hardware interfaces. derived from the headers of TCP, IP and Ethernet messages (21). To communicate directly with the host

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Network Interface Card (NIC, 18), a Bare PC NIC driver applications, which are very difficult to achieve in a was written (19). Four components were created within the centralized OS based computing architecture. Bare PC Webmail application to handle all Webmail B. Design considerations functions. These are a POP3 Object (5) to retrieve email messages from an email server, SMTP Object (6) to send The design of the Bare PC Webmail server was a messages from clients to the server, TLS Object (8) very daunting and challenging task. The first task was to to encrypt all messages being transmitted and an HTTP understand the functionality of the entire Webmail system Object (7) to interface with web clients. At initialization, a and as such, one Linux-based and one windows-based task pool of POP3 (12), SMTP (11), TLS (9) and HTTP servers were installed and studied carefully. The design (10) objects are created along with their associated TCB also avoids the use of any OS-based features and kernels, table entries for use by the server application. When a and creates an application, which will run on a Bare PC. client request arrives, one of these objects based on an The design of the Bare PC webmail application was based HTTP, POP3 or SMTP request is placed in the Resume on state transition diagrams. The SMTP, POP3, TLS and Task List (15), and an active status flag is set within its HTTP protocols were intertwined to allow the execution associated TCB entry. The TCB entry contains all of the of the specified function in the message. Figure 3 unique data attributes associated with the object, and its illustrates the intertwining of the protocols and the executable state information. When the task is complete, message exchanges between a client and a server to it is returned to its appropriate task stack (14) so that it can establish and close a connection. As shown in the figure, be reused again. The active flag in the associated TCB when a client request a TCP connection to sever, it sends entry along with associated data fields are then reset. a SYN request and wait for an SYN-ACK and then sends an ACK. After the ACK is sent, the state moves into the The Bare PC architecture for Webmail systems is TCP ESTAB state where protocols can send and receive novel and unique in many respects. The Webmail messages. Figure 4 shows the state transition diagram for application only performs functions that are truly intended the TLS handshake process between a client and a server. in its design. The scheduling mechanism is optimized for Here the client request a TLS connection to the server after its function, and it can be claimed that it is an optimal it has established TCP connection to the server. When the solution for this application. The RCV task (20) receives server receives the request, it must validate the client by packets and processes them in a single thread of execution sending the certificate and key information to the client. without any interruptions or process swapping until the Once the client is validated and the keys for encryption are status is updated in TCB. The HTTP, TLS, SMTP or established the client and server move to the TLS-ESTB POP3 tasks do the same when it is ready to run. The state, where encrypted messages can be exchanged. Figure suspension place and time is determined by the AO 5 shows the state transition diagram for the SMTP programmer at the program time and it is implemented in connection establishment process. After the client and the code. The AO programmer will only suspend a task if server establish TCP connection, they must move to the it is waiting for an event. When a task is complete, the SMTP-WESTAB so the server can validate the client same task will be reused without creating new tasks. All before messages can be exchanged. Figure 6 shows the task pools are statically created by the AO programmer. state transition diagram for the POP3 connection The novelty of this server approach stems from the notion establishment process. After the TCP connection that the process execution knowledge and control are establishment between the client and server, they must shifted from OS environment to AO programmer move to the POP3-WESTAB state, so that the server can environment thus making the application self-controlled, validate the client before message exchanges. self-executed, and self-managed. The system always runs a RCV task or any of the tasks thus making the scheduler simple and its mechanism first come first serve. However, if the suspended delayed task expires in the Delayed List, it moves to the Resume List and follows the first-in-first- out (FIFO) priority. There is no need to prioritize any tasks in this model as all client requests will be given equal priority as they are ordered with respect to their arrivals. The Webmail server architecture is a “design for optimization” rather than enhancing performance after the design. This approach can be used throughout any Bare PC

©The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access by the GSTF 74 GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC) Vol.4 No.3, October 2015

Figure 6: State Transition Diagram for POP3 Connection Establishment

Figure 3: State Transition Diagram for Connection Establishment and Closure IV. EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

A. Experimental Setup A Bare PC environmental setup was established as shown in figure 7 below. All switches used in the setup were gigabit switches. The clients ran Windows 7 with and as the web clients. The OS- based servers ran Windows 2012 or Linux (CentOS / Fedora). The routers were Linux based. All machines were Dell OptiPlex GX520s. OS-based Webmail system details are as follows: Atmail Server 6.20.4 (Linux), Icewarp Server 11.2 (XP), and Squirrelmail Server 1.4.22 (Linux). A legacy client PC located 50 miles away with about 30 router and firewall hops from the Bare PC network was used for the WAN measurements. The Visual Trace Route tool verified the hop count during the tests, which were performed in a contiguous time period.

Figure 4: State Transition Diagram TLS Handshake

Figure 5: State Transition Diagram for SMTP Connection Figure 7: Experimental Setup Establishment

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B. Results Analysis The average waiting time for a user to receive a response from the server, when the server is under heavy Different test scenarios were run and captured with load was captured with web stress tool and analyzed in Wireshark analyzer and web stress tool. The final results figure 10 below. We see that the wait time for both Bare are analyzed in this section. Figure 8 shows the measure PC systems (i.e. secure and non-secure is relatively low of CPU load over a time period, using TLS and Non-TLS under 100 msec as compared to the Linux systems which enabled webmail systems on Bare PC, Windows and are about 100 msec. The Windows systems however have Linux as captured on web stress tool. As shown in the high wait times of 300 to 500 msec. figure the Bare PC systems (i.e. Secure and non-secure webmail systems) start with high CPU utilization and linear out as the time increases. This is due to saturation of request when the times are high. The Linux based systems seem flat throughout but the windows systems increase their CPU utilization, when the time increases.

Figure 10: Waiting time for response when servers are under stress

Figure 11 shows the server response rate of the server. A higher response rate corresponds to lower wait time for the user. As we can see, the Bare systems have high response rates which clearly justifies the small wait Figure 8: Server CPU load over time time on the part of the user. The Windows systems have the lowest response rate and therefore a higher wait time The server bandwidth or throughput which is measured for the users. The total processing time for a single in bits/second was captured with web stress tool over time complete request of 200 bytes file size is presented in and analyzed in figure 9 below. As shown, the Bare PC figure 12 below. The Bare systems have low processing systems increase exponentially and become flat after 5 time because they take advantage of the threading seconds. This corresponds to the rate of usage as shown in techniques, single thread of execution technique, higher figure 8. The Linux and Windows systems also increase load distribution to process the request much quickly. The exponentially to about 70Kbit/sec and become flat after 5 Linux systems have the second best times as compared to seconds, thus corresponding to the load on the server. the Windows systems.

0.2 Server Response Rate 0.18 0.16 0.14 0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06

Server Response Rate Response Server 0.04 0.02 0 Squirrelmail-Linux Atmail-Linux Cent Icewarp-Win Bare PC Fedora OS No-TLS TLS-Enabled

Figure 9: Server throughput over time Figure 11: Server response rate for request

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Figure 13 shows the processing times for a single inbox request over a WAN environment. Again the Bare systems show very low processing time as compared to the Linux and Windows systems. However the processing times Linux and Windows systems seem to be very close. This could be attributed to the multiple hop counts and the Linux systems inability to leverage on processing power to reduce the time. Figure 14 shows the processing times in seconds of a single 120,000 bytes attachment over a WAN for all systems. Bare PC is still lower than the other systems by a margin of about 46% average for all the other systems.

Figure 14: Time to process a single 120,000 bytes message on a WAN Processing Time 0.5 0.45 0.4 0.35 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15

Processing Time(sec) Processing 0.1 0.05 0 Squirrelmail-Linux Atmail-Linux Cent Icewarp-Win Bare PC Fedora OS No-TLS TLS-Enabled

Figure 12: Time to process a single request

Figure 15: Time between the first ACK after request and first Data sent

Figure 15 shows the time captured when the first ACK for the request comes in the time it takes the server to send the first data packet. Bare has low processing time as compared to the other systems.

V. CONCLUSION

In this paper we discussed a framework for the design and implementation of a secure Bare PC web-mail system. This framework can serve as fundamentals to the Figure 13: Time for processing a single inbox request on a WAN development of any reliable system based on the Bare PC paradigm. Results from the experimental analysis conducted indicate that Bare PC applications perform better than all the other OS-based systems in terms of throughput, processing time etc. The webmail systems does not use file system as seen in regular webmail applications. It only makes use of physical memory. A file system has been developed for Bare PC applications, but was not included in this implementation since it has not being validated. Future work on the webmail system will

©The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access by the GSTF 77 GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC) Vol.4 No.3, October 2015

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[10] G. Ford, R. K. Karne, A. L. Wijesinha, and P. Appiah-Kubi, “The performance of a Bare Machine email server,” in 21st International Symposium on Computing Architecture and High AUTHORS’ PROFILE Performance Computing, 2009. [11] G. H. Khaksari, A. L. Wijesinha, R. K. Karne, L. He, and S. Girumala, “A Peer-to-Peer bare PC VoIP Application,” in IEEE Consumer and Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC), Las Vegas, 2007. [12] G. H. Khaksari, A. L. Wijesinha, R. . Karne, L. He, and S. Girumala, “A Peer-to-Peer Bare PC VoIP Application,” in IEEE Consumer and Communications and Networking Conference, Las Vegas, 2007. [13] A. Emdadi, R. K. Karne, and A. L. Wijesinha, “Implementing the TLS Protocol on a Bare PC,” in 2nd International Conference on Dr. Patrick Appiah-Kubi is an Assistant professor and IT program Computer Research and Development (ICCRD), 2010. coordinator in the Electronics and Computer Engineering [14] “Atmail-Linux Webmail Server.” [Online]. Available: Department at Indiana State University, USA. He previously worked www.atmail.com. [Accessed: 05-Jun-2015]. as a lecturer in the Computer and Information Sciences Department [15] “Mailtraq email server-the complete email server.” [Online]. at Towson University. He also worked as a systems engineer and IT Available: www.mailtraq.com. [Accessed: 10-Jun-2015]. consultant at MVS Consulting in Washington DC before joining [16] “Axigen Email Sevrer.” [Online]. Available: www.axigen.com. Towson University. He has a Doctorate in Information Technology [Accessed: 23-May-2015]. from Towson University, Master’s in Electronics and Computer Technology from Indiana State University, and a Bachelor’s in

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Computer Science from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. His research interests are in bare machine computing systems, networks, Cloud Computing, Big Data and mining, Distributed Databases and security.

Dr. Anthony K. Tsetse received his B. S. Computer Science degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana .He earned his M.S. Communication and Media Engineering degree from the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences Germany and M.S. in Information Technology degree from the IT University of Copenhagen , Denmark. He graduated from Towson University, USA with a Doctor of Science degree in Information Technology. Anthony is currently an Assistant professor in the department of Computer Information Systems at the State University of New York Fredonia. His current research interests include Bare Machine Computing, Network Performance analysis, Cloud computing, Network security and Data Analytics.

Alae Loukili holds a doctorate in Information Technology and a Masters degree in Computer Science from Towson University. He also holds a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from l' Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Electricité et de Mécanique de Casablanca. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Ohio Dominican University. His research interests are in computer networks and data communications, wireless communications, and bare machine computing.

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