Van Horn to Fuchsia: Capability-based Access Control

I have uploaded the Draft Design Document of the group you have chosen as feedback to each respective group's submission. They will also be available under materials, but this way it is clear which project you are supposed to give feedback on.

Further, I have installed a forum where you can ask the group you are reviewing for clarification in case this is needed.

Since there have been some questions, I want to clarify the format of the upcoming feedback session.

Before: We expect you to upload a written description of your design that the other group that will evaluate your design can use. You are not required, but encouraged, to use one of the provided templates, as they already contain all necessary sections, making your life easier.

Presentation: The "presentation" of your design is freeform. Meaning, we expect you to present your design in an understandable way, but do NOT require any particular format. Using slides / whiteboard / puppets or whatever else you can imagine will help other groups understand your presentation is totally up to you. The length of the presentation should be 8-10 minutes. This way, the other groups (and we as instructors) have the chance to ask questions for 20 minutes. It is NOT necessary to split the presentation among all groups members. However, everyone should of course be able to answer the questions regarding the group's design. 

Observing your very lively design discussions this week, we realized that the alotted time might not be sufficient to flesh out your design, especially considering the number of characteristics you have identified in the course of the seminar. Thus, we are currently looking into restructuring the latter part of the seminar so you have more time to properly finish your designs. In the meantime, I can offer you (either by yourself or with your group) to set up individual meetings in case you want feedback on your design (or to discuss capabilities in general). This is of course completely optional and will not affect your grade in any way.

To support your design process further, I have also uploaded my recently accepted work "SoK: Capability Operating Systems: Is the Future Finally Here?" to the materials section of the CMS. It will be published at USENIX Security later this year, so apart from our research group you are the first ones to read it. I hope it can give you some interesting insights!

Contrary to what I have said yesterday, it is actually much easier if you set up the groups yourself in the CMS, rather than sending me an email. The functionality is available on your personal site in CMS, same place you can also find your submissions. One group has already found it, you can just ignore this message.

Team groupings can be changed until the beginning of the next seminar session, then they are fixed.

As mentioned in yesterday’s session, I would like to once again draw your attention to the research papers and links included in the further readings. In particular, having a basic understanding of SES and Cap’n Web before our next meeting would greatly enrich the discussion. You are not required to submit something about them, but of course, sending questions in advance is highly encouraged and very welcome.

As discussed yesterday, I re-arranged the Miro board slightly according to our discussion and left some questions that could help you extract interesting insights from the papers for next week. The questions are definitely not exhaustive, please do not limit yourself to answering them. In fact, feel free to ignore them entirely and provide your own, more interesting points :)

Side-note: Please remember that we are interested in your views and insights for the submissions, not summaries.

Please remember to read the 5 Papers on Capabilities in General found in the materials section and submit the respective short takeaways / own thoughts on the paper. Of course you can also include questions if understanding was difficult so we can prepare accordingly.

The reading is essential so the fun part of the seminar, the informed discussion, can start right away.