Isolating untrusted software extensions by custom scoping rules

• Authors: Philip W. L. Fong;Simon Orr
• Venue: Computer Languages, Systems and Structures
• Year: 2010

In a modern programming language, scoping rules determine the visibility of names in various regions of a program. In this work, we examine the idea of allowing an application developer to customize the scoping rules of its underlying language. We demonstrate that such an ability can serve as the cornerstone of a security architecture for dynamically extensible systems. 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 (i.e., scoping rules) 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. Name visibility control in the style of IsoMod is therefore a lightweight access control mechanism for Java-style language environments.