Paper reading homework

In this lecture, we will discuss system call interposition as a general technique for limiting the damage that a buggy or malicious application can inflict on the rest of the system.

In preparation for lecture, first read sections 1-3 of the paper A Secure Environment for Untrusted Helper Applications motivating the goals of system call interposition, and then read Traps and Pitfalls: Practical Problems in System Call Interposition Based Security Tools, which reflects on the challenges that the authors discovered in trying to build such a system.

Which of the pitfalls described in section 4 of the "Traps and Pitfalls" paper are still applicable to xv6's simpler syscall interface, and which would not be possible?

Submit your answer in an ASCII text file named homework.txt to the corresponding "Lecture N" assignment on Gradescope.


Questions or comments regarding 6.1810? Send e-mail to the course staff at 61810-staff@lists.csail.mit.edu.

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