Solaris
Researcher: Matt Hillman
Date Started: Oct 15, 2008
This project is currently focussed on developing a Ruby based debugging component for Solaris to allow process manipulation in a programmatic way. Currently development has centred around manipulating processes using traditional debugging techniques on the SPARC platform, but ultimately it should allow debugging and DTrace based techniques to be used together in a complimentary way with support for both x86 and SPARC.
Solaris is a Unix-based operating system started by Sun Microsystems which runs on both SPARC and x86 platforms. With the introduction of Solaris 10 many interesting technologies and security features are available, including fine grained privilege sets and virtualisation with Solaris Zones and Containers. This research project aims in the long term to investigate the security surrounding such features, beginning with a the virtualisation technology of Solaris Zones. Because Solaris is more commonly deployed on SPARC architecture the focus of the project will be on, though not limited to, Solaris running on a SPARC platform.