Trustworthy Systems

Components + Security = OS Extensibility

Authors

Antony Edwards and Gernot Heiser

    School of Computer Science and Engineering
    UNSW,
    Sydney 2052, Australia

Abstract

Component-based programming systems have shown themselves to be a natural way of constructing extensible software. Well-defined interfaces, encapsulation, late binding and polymorphism promote extensibility, yet despite this synergy, components have not been widely employed at the systems level. This is primarily due to the failure of existing component technologies to provide the protection and performance required of systems software. In this paper we identify the requirements for a component system to support secure extensions, and describe the design of such a system on the Mungi OS.

BibTeX Entry

  @inproceedings{Edwards_Heiser_01,
    address          = {Gold Coast, Australia},
    author           = {Antony Edwards and Gernot Heiser},
    booktitle        = {Proceedings of the 6th Asia-Pacific Computer Systems Architecture Conference},
    month            = jan,
    pages            = {27--34},
    paperurl         = {https://trustworthy.systems/publications/papers/Edwards_Heiser_01.pdf},
    publisher        = {IEEE Computer Society Press},
    title            = {{C}omponents + {S}ecurity = {OS E}xtensibility},
    year             = {2001}
  }

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