iyengar@grad2.cis.upenn.edu (Anand Iyengar) (09/19/89)
Could anyone suggest good reading in the area of Capability based systems? Pointers to the C-Machine (done in London?) would be especially helpful. Thanks in advance. Anand. -- "Surely you're not happy: you no longer play the game." {arpa | bit}net: iyengar@eniac.seas.upenn.edu uucp: !$ | uunet --- Lbh guvax znlor vg'yy ybbx orggre ebg-guvegrrarg? ---
sape@cwi.nl (Sape Mullender) (09/20/89)
iyengar@grad2.cis.upenn.edu (Anand Iyengar) writes: > Could anyone suggest good reading in the area of Capability based >systems? Pointers to the C-Machine (done in London?) would be especially >helpful. Thanks in advance. You might care to read up on the Amoeba project of Free University and Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam. Amoeba is a capability-based distributed operating system. Every object is referenced through a capability, a 128-bit data structure, containing enough randomness combined with some cryptographic machinery that prevent guessing or forging genuine capabilities. Since objects can only be referred to through their capabilities, you can't even talk about an object to the system, let alone obtain illegal access to it. If there is sufficient interest in the mechanisms of Amoeba I'll be happy to describe them in comp.os.research in more detail. They have, however, already been described adequately in %T Using Sparse Capabilities in a Distributed Operating System %A A. S. Tanenbaum %A S. J. Mullender %A R. van\ Renesse %J Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems %P 558\-563 %D May 1986 Sape Mullender