A recursive virtual machine architecture - implementation and associated protection problems

Abstract

Investigations into the security of computer systems are becoming more important. With more people daily coming into contact with these machines, and personal data stored within the systems accessible in many cases to any knowledgeable user, the question of privacy of information held in these computer systems becomes paramount. A different approach, from that currently used, is advocated in this thesis. The implementation of a recursive virtual machine system is described, which it is proposed, will permit a highly secure approach to providing an inter-process protection structure in a computing environment. On attempting to extend this system from permitting purely synchronous processing to allowing some form of asynchronous processing, it was discovered that this could not be achieved without a radical alteration in the initial design proposals. This thesis describes the synchronous machine implemented and provides a discussion of the problem of providing a generalized asynchronous processing mechanism together with a proposed solution to this problem.