Hacksaw is a prototype toolkit to debloat Linux kernel based on hardware device inventory and dependency analysis. In particular, it customizes a given system disk image for a target hardware platform such as a cloud environment (e.g., an Azure VM) or a bare-metal machine. It was presented at ACM CCS 2023.

Hacksaw consists of numerous scripts and binaries managing its three main procedures: hardware database building, dependency analysis, and system image patching. We prepare Docker/Container environments to properly use them and a test script to run them in a proper order. For example, you can debloat a Ubuntu cloud image for a default QEMU-KVM environment like below:

$ pushd test
$ wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/mantic/current/mantic-server-cloudimg-amd64.img
$ ./run.sh -b 1 -p hwprof/qemu-kvm.txt -i mantic-server-cloudimg-amd64.img
$ popd

The initial execution of run.sh could take several hours depending on your machine specification and require a lot of storage because it will compile Linux kernel 2-3 times. However, the hardware database and dependency analysis results can be reused later depending on (major) kernel version, kernel build configuration, and device inventory.

Further instruction will be added later.

A version of Hacksaw for the CCS 2023 artifact evaluation can be found at https://github.com/microsoft/hacksaw/tree/ccs23ae.

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