A Module System for Isolating Untrusted Software Extensions

With the recent advent of dynamically extensible software systems, in which software extensions may be dynamically loaded into the address space of a core application to augment its capabilities, there is a growing interest in protection mechanisms that can isolate untrusted software components from a host application. Existing language-based environments such as the JVM and the CLI achieves software isolation by an interposition mechanism known as stack inspection. Expressive as it is, stack inspection is known to lack declarative characterization and is brittle in the face of evolving software configurations. A run-time module system, ISOMOD, is proposed for the Java platform to facilitate software isolation. A core application may create namespaces dynamically and impose arbitrary name visibility policies to control whether a name is visible, to whom it is visible, and in what way it can be accessed. Because ISOMOD exercises name visibility control at load time, loaded code runs at full speed. Furthermore, because ISOMOD access control policies are maintained separately, they evolve independently from core application code. In addition, the ISOMOD policy language provides a declarative means for expressing a very general form of visibility constraints. Not only can the ISOMOD policy language simulate a sizable subset of permissions in the Java 2 security architecture, it does so with policies that are robust to changes in software configurations. The ISOMOD policy language is also expressive enough to completely encode a capability type system known as Discretionary Capability Confinement. In spite of its expressiveness, the ISOMOD policy language admits an efficient implementation strategy. In short, ISOMOD avoids the technical difficulties of interposition by trading off an acceptable level of expressiveness. Name visibility control in the style of ISOMOD is therefore a lightweight alternative to interposition.