Protection Errors in Operating Systems: Serialization

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Author

Jim Carlstedt

Entry type

techreport

Abstract

This document describes a class of protection errors found in current computer operating systems. It is intended (1) for persons responsible for improving the security aspects of existing operating system software and (2) for designers and students of operating systems. The purpose is to help protection evaluators find such errors in current systems and to help designers and implementers avoid them in future systems, by analysis and methodical approach. This report deals with a class of errors, initially identified empirically, that formeditself around a group of protection errors (within a larger collection) having the common characteristic of involving operations or accesses ocurring in the wrong order or at the wrong times; hence the name \"serialization\". In its broadest sense, it includes a large proportion of all programming errors which may have improper order or scheduling, and, in a narrower sense includes only those errors resulting from improper ordering of accesses to objects accessible by potentially concurrent operations. This study is neither a full analysis of the subject of the ordering of operations nor only a discussion of process synchronization, but rather an attempt to give perspective to several closely-related subclasses of problems in this area.

Institution

University of Southern California

Key alpha

Carlstedt

Organization

Information Sciences Institute

Publication Date

0000-00-00

Keywords

protetion errors, serialization

Language

English

Location

A hard-copy of this is in the Papers Cabinet

Subject

Protection errors, serialization

BibTex-formatted data

To refer to this entry, you may select and copy the text below and paste it into your BibTex document. Note that the text may not contain all macros that BibTex supports.

@Techreport{ Carlstedt,
	title = "Protection Errors in Operating Systems: Serialization",
	author = "Jim Carlstedt",
	institution = "University of Southern California",
	organization = "Information Sciences Institute",
	abstract = "This document describes a class of protection errors found in current computer operating systems. It is intended (1) for persons responsible for improving the security aspects of existing operating system software and (2) for designers and students of operating systems. The purpose is to help protection evaluators find such errors in current systems and to help designers and implementers avoid them in future systems, by analysis and methodical approach.

This report deals with a class of errors, initially identified empirically, that formeditself around a group of protection errors (within a larger collection) having the common characteristic of involving operations or accesses ocurring in the wrong order or at the wrong times; hence the name \"serialization\". In its broadest sense, it includes a large proportion of all programming errors which may have improper order or scheduling, and, in a narrower sense includes only those errors resulting from improper ordering of accesses to objects accessible by potentially concurrent operations.

This study is neither a full analysis of the subject of the ordering of operations nor only a discussion of process synchronization, but rather an attempt to give perspective to several closely-related subclasses of problems in this area.",
	keywords = "protetion errors, serialization",
	language = "English",
	subject = "Protection errors, serialization",
}