Vat Location Service

[Eric Messick]

In message <3.0.5.32.19990111145747.00baa410@homer>, Bill Frantz <frantz@communities.com> wrote:

>[?] Why does the VLS checkpoint?

So that it can come back up again after a system crash and service
requests for Vats before they time out and resend their addresses.
Other than polling, there's no way for a Vat to know if the VLS is up
or not.

>[?] What secrets?

The key that it takes to prove that you're the real VLS advertised on
this port.  If someone acquired this, they could step in after the
real VLS dies and listen on the same port.  This could allow the VLS
to capture requests to specific Vats, creating a man-in-the-middle
attack.  Since connections are end to end authenticated, this is
probably redundant.

-eric