Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: arch roadmap 1 (and "what's tom up to")

[Jeremy Shaw]

At Wed, 07 Jul 2004 08:16:37 +1000,
Robert Collins wrote:
> 
> [1  <text/plain (quoted-printable)>]
> On Wed, 2004-07-07 at 07:27, Jeremy Shaw wrote:
> 
> > (1) You probably don't have a haskell interpreter installed
> > (2) You probably don't trust me to run abitrary code on your system
> > 
> > But, if tla has a built-in VM, with a reasonable security module, both
> > problems are solved:
> > 
> > (1) I can distribute the script as a pre-compiled byte-code, so even
> >     if you don't have a haskell->furth compiler, you can still run the
> >     script.
> >
> > (2) You can rest assured that my script isn't doing anything malicious
> >     (by only allowing by untrusted scripts to execute safe commands in
> >     a sandbox).
> 
> I don't recall seeing sandbox mentioned in Tom's papers. Did I miss it?
> Or are presuming that that is a intended & desired feature?

I talked with tom briefly on #arch, and he has given some thought to
handling security in the VM. I don't think the security stuff has been
fully flushed out yet. Also, the term sandbox may have some very
specific meanings attached to it that I am not aware of, so don't read
to much into that word.

I think the basic model is, the VM will have someway to mark commands
as safe or unsafe. There will also be a way to set which unsafe
commands a program can run on a per program, per command basis. This
would allow you to implement a large number of possible security
policies...

Jeremy Shaw.