>> - Let the compiler enforce program isolation, not the processor 
>> hardware. (That works great if everybody uses your compiler, but I'm not 
>> sure what happens if you allow arbitrary 3rd party code to execute...)
> 
>   The only way to make an OS secure is to have hardware support. Hardware
> is the only thing that can stop a program from accessing what it must not
> access.
> 
>   (Ok, there's another alternative: Run the programs under an emulator.
> Of course this is out of question because of speed issues.)

Their approach seems to be to "verify" each program before it runs, 
checking that it doesn't do any "bad" things.

Presumably verifying whether a program does or does not do something 
"bad" is formally equivilent to the halting problem, so I imagine they 
apply some arbitrary set of restrictions to simplify the problem.

Singularity is of course a research experiment, not a production-grade 
OS. It would be interesting to see if they could make it work in the 
face of hostile 3rd party code...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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