Protection in operating systems

  • Authors:
  • Michael A. Harrison;Walter L. Ruzzo;Jeffrey D. Ullman

  • Affiliations:
  • Univ. of California, Berkeley;Univ. of California, Berkeley;Princeton, Univ., Princeton, NJ

  • Venue:
  • Communications of the ACM
  • Year:
  • 1976

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Abstract

A model of protection mechanisms in computing systems is presented and its appropriateness is argued. The “safety” problem for protection systems under this model is to determine in a given situation whether a subject can acquire a particular right to an object. In restricted cases, it can be shown that this problem is decidable, i.e. there is an algorithm to determine whether a system in a particular configuration is safe. In general, and under surprisingly weak assumptions, it cannot be decided if a situation is safe. Various implications of this fact are discussed.