[cap-talk] BitFrost : OLPC Security Architecture

[Ian G]

Toby Murray wrote:

> There are hints of CapDesk, Plash, Polaris and Capability-based OSes
> running through the following sections (the only parts of the doc I've
> read so far) which are pretty tantalising:

I asked that very question ... here is Ivan's reply:


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: One Laptop per Child security
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:56:19 -0800
From: Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>

Hi Ian,

Ian G wrote:
 > Be patient ... there will be a lot to absorb.  I skimmed 
the document
 > and was dissatisfied myself due to its very odd 
formatting and lack of
 > "what it really means" details....

How do I make it better? I'm really open to concrete 
suggestions. It's an important document for us, and I'd like 
it to be clear and for it to read well.

 > One question:  is Bitfront intentionally designed around 
capabilities
 > concepts?  Or are the similarities accidental?

One of my slides at the RSA talk was "know your history", 
and listed the Rice University Computer, the B5000, the BLI, 
the Dennis and Van Horn supervisor, the PDP-1, the Chicago 
Magic Number Machine, the CAL-TSS, System 250, CAP, Hydra, 
StarOS, System/38 and iAPX 432. That should tell you about 
where I found some of my inspiration :)

So no, the similarities are anything but accidental, but I 
shy away from the terminology simply because large amounts 
of the functionality sit on a blurry margin between 
capabilities and permissions. The 'file open' dialog 
certainly returns a capability on a particular file, but 
it's more complicated with many of the other protections.

Cheers,