Taming of pict

Abstract

This article presents additional necessary measures that enable us to use Pict as an object-capability programing language. It is desirable to be able to assess the worst possible threat that we-users-risk if we run a given program. If we know the threat, we are able to decide whether or not we are willing to risk running the program. The cost of a security audit that reveals such an assessment will be non-zero but it need not to be directly dependent on the size of the whole original program. It is possible to write programs in such a way that this analysis can be reliably performed on a fraction of the original program - on the trusted computing base. This technique does not always give the most accurate assessment but it gives sound and interesting assessment relatively cheaply. It does not prevent usage of other techniques that can further refine the initial assessment. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.