Virtual machine

• US 8,312,268 B2
• Filed: 12/12/2008
• Issued: 11/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/12/2008
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Miyamoto, Takashi, Okamoto, Kohsuke
• Primary Examiner(s): Barron, Jr., Gilberto
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ho, Virginia T
• Application Number:
  US12/333,436
• Publication Number:
  US 20100154042A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,432 Days
• Field of Search: 726/4, 726/17, 726/21, 713/166, 713/167, 718/104, 711147-153
• US Class Current: 713/166
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/30 Authentication, i.e. establishing the identity or authorisation of security principals
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/31 User authentication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/44 Program or device authentication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/53 by executing in a restricted environment, e.g. sandbox or secure virtual machine
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/08 for authentication of entities cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication H04L9/32
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/1458 Denial of Service
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3263 involving certificates, e.g. public key certificate [PKC] or attribute certificate [AC]; Public key infrastructure [PKI] arrangements network architectures or network communication protocols for supporting authentication of entities using certificates in a packet data network H04L63/0823

Abstract

The present invention is directed to various systems and/or methods relating to a software platform that provides for authentication of a requestor. Preferably, this authentication happens before there is an opportunity for any resource intensive request to harm operation of the system. Preferably, a reliability level is based on authentication so that the amount and/or type of resource access is controlled based, at least in part, on the authentication information. Preferably, heap usage is controlled by this reliability level. Preferably, the software platform is a virtual machine, preferably the Java Virtual Machine.

Claims

1. A method of using a software platform, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving a request from a requestor;

determining authentication information in the received request;

setting a reliability level from among a plurality of reliability levels based on the authentication information determined in the determining step;

after the setting step, controlling a resource allocation allowed in a response to the request as controlled by the software platform based on the reliability level set at the setting step;

creating a thread in response to the received request; and

associating the thread with the reliability level set at the setting step;

wherein;

the controlling step has begun to be performed before the thread can cause any use of the heap;

the software platform is a Virtual Machine (VM) including a heap memory; and

the control of the controlling step includes an upper limit on heap usage based on the reliability level set at the setting step.

2. A software platform system comprising:

a first resource;

a container controller module structured and/or programmed to receive a request from a requestor and to determine authentication information in the request; and

a policy module structured and/or programmed to set a reliability level from among a plurality of reliability levels based on the authentication information;

wherein;

the container controller module is further structured and/or programmed to at least partially control resource allocation of the first resource in a response to the request based on the reliability level;

the software platform system is a Virtual Machine (VM);

the first resource is a heap memory;

the container controller module is further structured and/or programmed to set an upper limit on heap usage based on the reliability level; and

the container controller module is further structured and/or programmed to create a thread in response to the request and to associate the thread with the reliability level and to begin controlling resource allocation to the heap by the thread before any use of the heap by the thread.