LIGHTeX: A lightweight framework for extending applications into trusted execution

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

1-2026

Abstract

Many existing applications require strong security guarantees. Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) have been proposed to address this need. However, running applications inside a TEE often requires substantial redevelopment to fit the constrained environment. Moreover, existing extension frame-works demand additional engineering effort to match specific logic models. To address these challenges, we present LIGHTEX, a lightweight framework that extends existing applications into Trusted Applications (TAs). Specifically, LIGHTEX enables this transition with minimal source code modifications. The extended TAs can run directly within the trusted runtime environment. LIGHTEX introduces a secure and efficient mechanism for system call reuse, reducing the development effort required to support system functions. Meanwhile, it reduces runtime overhead by optimizing context store/restore during world switching. These strategies enable LIGHTEX to operate effectively and significantly reduce runtime overhead incurred when extending applications to trusted executions due to environmental transitions. We prototype LIGHTEX and evaluate the performance on both single functions and real-world applications. The performance evaluation indicates that LIGHTEX requires only 1.67% code modification to successfully extend real-world applications into TAs. Performance tests indicate that LIGHTEX introduces an average overhead of only 11.73% for simple applications. Notably, in real-world application performance tests, the absence of interrupt preemption within the TEE leads to a maximum performance improvement of up to 60.25%.

Keywords

System Call Reuse, Trusted Application Extending, Trusted Execution Environment

Discipline

Information Security | Software Engineering

Research Areas

Cybersecurity

Publication

IEEE Transactions on Computers

First Page

1

Last Page

13

ISSN

0018-9340

Identifier

10.1109/TC.2026.3726050

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2026.3726050

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