Security in Operating Systems
Stub. What OS security has to guarantee, authentication (proving who a principal is), access control (deciding what an authenticated principal may do — ACLs and capabilities), the cryptographic primitives the OS relies on, and the additional concerns a distributed OS/file system raises.
The OS’s security responsibilities split cleanly into two questions asked in sequence: authentication (who is making this request?) and access control (is that principal allowed to do this?) — covered here via the standard mechanisms (passwords/credentials, access control lists, capability-based systems) an OS actually implements at the process/file boundary. Cryptography is covered only as much as the OS needs to implement these mechanisms soundly; for the full cryptographic toolkit (ciphers, signatures, key exchange) see security-in-distributed-systems, which this note defers to rather than duplicates. Closes with the security concerns specific to a distributed OS or file system, which is exactly where this note connects back to distributed-file-systems.
Outline (TODO — flesh out each)
- What OS security must guarantee
- Authentication
- Access control — ACLs, capabilities
- Cryptography, as used by the OS (pointer to security-in-distributed-systems for the full treatment)
- Security in a distributed OS/file system