Contemporary microprocessor designs are based on pervasively shared mutable state. This introduces numerous vulnerabilities that have been exploited to violate the security of our computing platforms. Mechanisms to mitigate these hazards, such as Memory Management Units (MMUs), increase the complexity and power-consumption of CPUs. The movement to multicore processors amplifies the problem and adds more […]
25
Aug
2022
Memory Safety Simplifies Microprocessor Design
Tags: actor, capability, concurrency, CPU, microprocessor, ocaps, POLA, power, processor, safety, security, synchronization
16
Feb
2017
Distributed Security
Tags: actor, authentication, authorization, capability, decryption, distribution, encryption, envelope, network, ocaps, POLA, proxy, receptionist, routing, sealer, stub, unsealer
Within a single address-space, the capability-security properties of actor references are guaranteed by the actor run-time. Memory-safe implementations of actor languages ensure that actor references cannot be forged. Having a reference to an actor means you have permission to send it a message. A single machine may host multiple independent actor address-spaces, each of which […]
09
Oct
2013
Towards a Universal Implementation of Unforgeable Actor Addresses
Tags: actor, capability, decryption, encryption, grant-matcher, ocaps, POLA, sealer, Slominski, trust, unsealer
[It is my pleasure to welcome my colleague and collaborator, Tristan Slominski, as a guest-blogger -Dale] 2017-02-07 EDIT: A previous version of this article used the term Domain instead of Realm. In the popular implementations of the Actor Model, actor addresses are usually globally available to any other actor desiring to discover them. However, in […]