MiSFIT: constructing safe extensible systems

Author

Small, Christopher ; Seltzer, Margo I.

Author_Institution

Div. of Appl. Sci., Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

6

Issue

3

fYear

1998

Firstpage

34

Lastpage

41

Abstract

The authors demonstrate how their Minimal i386 Software Fault Isolation Tool (MiSFIT) protects applications from end user extensions written in otherwise unsafe languages. They also compare the performance of unprotected code with MiSFIT-protected versions. MiSFIT can be used to fault isolate dynamically linked extensions to Web browsers, operating system extensions, or client code linked to a database server. As performance results show, by providing safety at a reasonably small overhead, MiSFIT is part of an end-to-end solution to the problem of constructing extensible systems

Keywords

program testing; software fault tolerance; software performance evaluation; Minimal i386 Software Fault Isolation Tool; Web browsers; client code; database server; dynamically linked extensions; end user extensions; end-to-end solution; operating system extensions; safe extensible systems development; unprotected code; unsafe languages; Application software; Assembly systems; Databases; Filters; Protection; Robustness; Runtime; Software safety; Software tools; Writing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Concurrency, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1092-3063

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/4434.708254

Filename

708254