A language-based system is a type of
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
that uses
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
features to provide
security
Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercion). Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, or any other entity or ...
, instead of or in addition to hardware mechanisms. In such systems, code referred to as the ''trusted base'' is responsible for approving programs for
execution
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in ...
, assuring they cannot perform operations detrimental to the system's stability without first being detected and dealt with.
[A Language-Based Approach to Security](_blank)
Schneider F., Morrissett G. (Cornell University) and Harper R. (Carnegie Mellon University). Informatics: 10 Years Back, 10 Years Ahead. (2000) A very common strategy of guaranteeing that such operations are impossible is to base the system around a
high-level language
A high-level programming language is a programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer. In contrast to low-level programming languages, it may use natural language ''elements'', be easier to use, or may automate (or ...
, such as
Java
Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
, whose design precludes dangerous constructs; many are entirely written in such a language, with only the minimum amount of
low-level code being used.
Since language-based systems can assure ahead of time that they cannot do things that can damage the system (such as corrupting memory by dereferencing
dangling pointer
Dangling pointers and wild pointers in computer programming are pointers that do not point to a valid object of the appropriate type. These are special cases of memory safety violations. More generally, dangling references and wild references a ...
s), it is possible for them to avoid expensive address space switches needed by traditional OSes; because of this,
microkernel
In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...
s are more popular than traditional systems. A more extreme form of this is a
high-level language computer architecture A high-level language computer architecture (HLLCA) is a computer architecture designed to be targeted by a specific high-level programming language (HLL), rather than the architecture being dictated by hardware considerations. It is accordingly al ...
, where the trusted base is pushed into hardware, and the entire system is written in a high-level language.
Examples
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Theseus OS*
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See also
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High-level language computer architecture A high-level language computer architecture (HLLCA) is a computer architecture designed to be targeted by a specific high-level programming language (HLL), rather than the architecture being dictated by hardware considerations. It is accordingly al ...
References
*A Sabelfeld, AC Myers
Language-based information-flow security' IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2003 Volume 21, Issue 1 pp. 5–19
*V Haldar, D Chandra, M Franz
Semantic remote attestation—a virtual machine directed approach to trusted computing' USENIX Virtual Machine Research and Technology Symposium, 2004
*Giacobazzi, Mastroeni
Abstract non-interference: parameterizing non-interference by abstract interpretation' Proceedings of the 31st ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages pp 186–97 (2004)
*Algis Rudys, Dan S. Wallach
Termination in language-based systems' ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC) Volume 5, Issue 2 (May 2002) pp. 138–68
Operating system kernels
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