OSDev.org

I started working on the Security article: http://www.osdev.org/wiki/Security

I got tired of seeing that be red, so I added stuff (intro and info on rings)

Please edit, add, etc...

Thoughts?

-JL

it looks good to me so far.

maybe we could include a very brief description about BoF's and how to prevent them? i would but i dont have time right now. maybe i will tommorrow

also more info about rings 1 and 2

Yeah, unfortunately I know little about these 2 rings...

BoF's.......? Sigh, I'm sick...I'm not good at remembering stuff right now..

-JL

Don't you think that Security should be a Category, not an article? I mean, there's much, much more to it than system rings. Maybe turn Security into a category and CPU rings as a separate article?

I agree, but does it matter? One article works too, because there is that little table of contents at the top.
I don't know, whatever seems better.

-JL

When starting from nothing, it's OK to start with an article. If somebody gets motivated later and writes a complete wiki article on one of the sub-subjects -- then a category will need to be created, the original Security article divided into little pieces of articles under the new category, and the original article deleted. Hopefully nobody will object to the process when the time comes.

The existence of the original article does hinder the process of creating the category, later. But unless someone wants to spend a week writing Security category articles right now -- it is something that should be postponed until later.

I reorganized the article a bit, added stubs on memory protection, and differentiated high-level security and low-level security. I think this better shows that security is a lot more than just CPU rings, like karekare0 said. Again, feel free to add more content.

Yeah, that seems to be a better layout.

-JL

BoF = Buffer overflow (its oddly acronym'd)

its to do with array sizes and input etc overwriting memory

and yeah i second the idea for having it as a category, that way it can be ordered much more clearly

I don't think rings 1 and 2 are important to discuss in this article.

Most architectures only have 2 rings: ring 0 (supervisor) and ring 1 (user).

Rings 1 and 2 are a "feature" of the Intel x86-architecture and isn't implemented in most other architectures.

I don't use them in my OS. I use only ring 0 and ring 3, supervisor/user.

I think only 2 rings are important when discussing low-level protection mechanisms.