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Review the eBPF Threat Model and eBPF Verifier Code Audit

Current funding opportunities sponsored by the eBPF Foundation include:

Research Fund

About

eBPF Foundation is pleased to invite university/research-institute faculty to respond to this call for research proposals on eBPF; up to 2 awards are available. We are interested in making awards on a wide range of eBPF research, including, but not limited to[1]:

  • eBPF program verification, and formal verification of the verifier and JITs
  • Limitations of the eBPF verifier and approaches to overcome them
  • Scalability and maintainability of the eBPF verifier
  • Improvements to eBPF program development and deployment
  • eBPF-based approaches to security and threat management
  • eBPF-based approaches to network performance analysis and optimization
  • eBPF-based approaches to application profiling/tracing
  • eBPF-based approaches to CPU scheduling
  • eBPF-based approaches for improving application efficiency
  • Previously unexplored, under-explored, and emerging use cases of eBPF
  • Techniques to optimize eBPF programs, for example static or dynamic optimizations
  • Usage of hardware security or performance features to benefit eBPF
  • Approaches to improving the in-kernel JIT compilers for eBPF
  • Safe enablement of unprivileged eBPF for application usage
  • Interaction between eBPF and end-host networking
  • eBPF use cases in high-performance networking
  • Security implications and innovations for end-host programmability using eBPF
  • Approaches to scaling eBPF programs in large-scale distributed systems
  • Techniques for software or hardware fault isolation in eBPF or related systems

To Apply

Applicants should submit the contents mentioned under the requirements section to research@ebpf.foundation considering the timelines mentioned below. Funding will range from $25,000 to $50,000 per proposal, depending on the specific requirements.

Application Timeline

Requirements

Proposals should include:
  • A summary of the project (2 pages maximum) explaining the area of focus, a description of techniques, any relevant prior work, and a timeline with milestones and expected outcomes.
  • A draft budget description (1 page) including an approximate cost of the award and explanation of how funds would be spent.
  • Curriculum Vitae for all project participants.
  • Organization details including tax information and administrative contact details.

Eligibility

  • Awards must comply with applicable U.S. and international laws, regulations and policies.
  • Applicants must be current full-time or part-time faculty at an accredited academic institution or at a reputed research institute.
  • Applicants must be the Principal Investigator on any resulting award.

Additional Information

  • Payment will be made to the proposer’s host university as an unrestricted gift. Because of its nature, salary/headcount could be included as part of the budget presented for the RFP. Since the award/gift is paid to the university, they will be able to allocate the funds to that winning project and have the freedom to use as they need.
  • Award funds can be used to cover a researcher’s salary. Typically research funds ideally cover graduate or post-graduate students’ employment/tuition and other research costs (e.g., equipment, laptops, incidental costs).

Terms & Conditions

  • By submitting a proposal, you are authorizing eBPF Foundation to evaluate the proposal for a potential award, and you agree to the terms herein.
  • You agree that eBPF Foundation will not be required to treat any part of the proposal as confidential or protected by copyright.
  • You agree and acknowledge that personal data submitted with the proposal, including name, mailing address, phone number, and email address of you and other named researchers in the proposal may be collected, processed, stored and otherwise used by eBPF Foundation for the purposes of evaluating the contents of the proposal.
  • You acknowledge that neither party is obligated to enter into any business transaction as a result of the proposal submission, eBPF Foundation is under no obligation to review or consider the proposal, and neither party acquires any intellectual property rights as a result of submitting the proposal.

[1] Most of the topics are taken from ACM Sigcomm 2023 eBPF Workshop topics

 

Mentorships

The eBPF Foundation is funding mentoring programs run on the LFX Mentorship platform. The eBPF Foundation is a great place to spend time learning, coding, documenting, participating, and contributing. We look forward to receiving your application to become a mentor, along with your innovative project ideas!

Generate a project proposal, by making a copy of and completing this Project Template, that is suitable for a mentorship and present it to the eBPF Foundation by email at mentoring@ebpf.foundation.

 

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