Components + security = OS extensibility
Antony Edwards, Gernot Heiser · 2001
Component-based programming systems have shown themselves to be a natural way of constructing extensible software. Well-defined interfaces, encapsulation, late bind-ing 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 exist-ing 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. 1.