Making information flow explicit in HiStar

HiStar is a new operating system designed to minimize the amount of code that must be trusted. HiStar provides strict information flow control, which allows users to specify precise data security policies without unduly limiting the structure of applications. HiStar's security features make it...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zeldovich, Nickolai, Boyd-Wickizer, Silas, Kohler, Eddie, Mazieres, David
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2012
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73665
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0238-2703
Description
Summary:HiStar is a new operating system designed to minimize the amount of code that must be trusted. HiStar provides strict information flow control, which allows users to specify precise data security policies without unduly limiting the structure of applications. HiStar's security features make it possible to implement a Unix-like environment with acceptable performance almost entirely in an untrusted user-level library. The system has no notion of superuser and no fully trusted code other than the kernel. HiStar's features permit several novel applications, including privacy-preserving, untrusted virus scanners and a dynamic Web server with only a few thousand lines of trusted code.