This is a collection of insights for designing capability based systems.
It may have some pertinence to object oriented design.
Here is a short introduction for the non computer specialist.
This longish note is an excellent introduction to capabilities.
It makes many important points that do not appear on my pages.
Be entertained and informed, but come back.
This is a good nuts and bolts description of why and how.
The Confused Deputy is a paper that describes a complex scenario that convinced me that capabilities were more than merely neat.
Abstraction Mechanisms for Access Control shows how capabilities are largely another perspective on the protection mechanisms found in classic object languages.
Mark Miller gives this Security Taxonomy, and his capabilities based language E.
Read at least the abstract of this paper.
Here are references to a few operating systems that have followed these principles.
Here are some capability ideas conveyed by a real writer, and some introductory essays by Shapiro and a suite of mail lists about capabilities and such.
Alan Bomberger’s truck metaphor.
Capability Myths Demolished (shorter) reports and rectifies several persistent misperceptions of capabilities.
I have not internalized Fred Spiessen’s thesis where he reasons about what programs are in a position to know and act upon concerning security.
Such reasoning is important but left implicit or informal in my pages.
Contrary to this article, we claim that there are computer security solutions.
Here I deplore Apple’s drift toward the walled garden.
Saltzer & Schroeder wrote a comprehensive paper in 1975 on computer security.
Mark Miller’s Thesis organizes and extends many of the ideas described here.
Here are some other perspectives on computer security.
This paper addresses some OS requirements beyond those originally considered in Keykos, but from a capability perspective.
A significant paper on the excessive authority in conventional platforms.
A 2012 survey of recent work.
