Report of evening session protection

Abstract

The session began late following an almost three hour dinner for some of us! (Southern hospitality?) Discussion centered on access control mechanisms in operating systems and/or in languages, weaknesses in the state of the art, and desirabilities for secure systems. Should protection be specifiable within the base language of a system? Jack Dennis: a resounding “yes”. It is highly desirable to associate protection with accessing. (There was some disagreement here). Barbara Liskov: Some help obtainable from type checking during compilation where privileges can be specified at compile time. (Beware of subsequent modifications). Gio Wiederhold: Subsets of types can be useful here.