CapableVMs

虚拟机（VMs，也称为托管语言运行时）是现代软件堆栈中无处不在的组件。它们为网络提供动力，运行在客户端浏览器、服务器端应用程序和智能手机应用程序中。在任何流行编程语言的排名中，前十大语言中至少有一半运行在虚拟机上（例如Python， Java, c#, Javascript， PHP）。一个关键问题是，相对于性能而言，VM安全性传统上是次要的。工业强度的vm具有庞大而复杂的代码库，以及大量手工优化。它们不仅超出了任何一个人的理解能力，而且安全性往往被被动地对待：成熟的、广泛使用的虚拟机，如HotSpot（标准Java虚拟机）每年通常有50-100个cve。CapableVMs项目假设CHERI硬件强制功能是第一个使VM安全主动的现实技术。为了解决这个假设，我们必须回答两个研究问题：虚拟机是否可以被划分成可以执行功能的隔间？划分对绩效有什么影响？这两个因素是相互关联的：将虚拟机划分为多个分区的某些方法可能会导致性能比其他方法更差。我们提出了许多划分虚拟机的不同方法，从小型虚拟机开始帮助我们理解问题，然后再扩展到V8 （Chrome内部的工业强度JavaScript虚拟机）。

Virtual machines (VMs, also known as managed language runtimes) are ubiquitous components in the modern software stack. They power the web, running in client-side browsers, server-side applications, and smartphone apps. In any ranking of popular programming languages, at least half of the top ten languages run on VMs (e.g. Python, Java, C#, Javascript, PHP).A key problem is that VM security has traditionally been a secondary concern relative to performance. Industrial strength VMs have large, complex code-bases, and large numbers of hand-crafted optimizations. Not only are they beyond any one person's ability to understand, but security has tended to be treated reactively: mature, widely used VMs such as HotSpot (the standard Java VM) regularly have 50-100 CVEs per year.The CapableVMs project hypothesises that CHERI hardware enforced capabilities are the first realistic technique to make VM security proactive. In order to address this hypothesis, we will have to answer two research questions: can VMs be divided into compartments that capabilities can then enforce? and what is the performance impact of compartmentalisation? These two factors are related: some ways of dividing VMs into compartments may cause worse performance than others. We propose a number of different ways of compartmentalising VMs, starting on small VMs to help us understand the problem, before scaling up to V8 (the industrial strength JavaScript VM inside Chrome).