Drawing the red line in Java

Software-based protection has become a viable alternative to hardware-based protection in systems based on languages such as Java, but the absence of hardware mechanisms for protection has been coupled with an absence of a user/kernel boundary. We show why such a "red line" must be present in order for a Java virtual machine to be as effective and as reliable as an operating system. We discuss how the red line can be implemented using software mechanisms, and explain the ones we use in the Java system that we are building.