Clements, JohnRudys, AlgisWallach, Dan S.2017-08-022017-08-022000-08-08Clements, John, Rudys, Algis and Wallach, Dan S.. "Termination in Language-Based Systems." (2000) https://hdl.handle.net/1911/96278.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/96278Language runtime systems are increasingly being embedded in systems to support runtime extensibility via mobile code. Such systems raise a number of concerns when the code running in such systems is potentially buggy or untrusted. While sophisticated access controls have been designed for mobile code and are shipping as part of commercial systems such as Java, there is no support for terminating mobile code short of terminating the entire language runtime. This paper presents a concept called "soft termination'' which can be applied to virtually any mobile code system. Soft termination allows mobile code threads to be safely terminated while preserving the stability of the language runtime. In addition, function bodies can be permanently disabled, thwarting attacks predicated on system threads eventually calling untrusted functions. We present a formal design for soft termination and an implementation of it for Java, built using Java bytecode rewriting, and demonstrating reasonable performance (5-40% slowdowns on benchmarks).15 ppengYou are granted permission for the noncommercial reproduction, distribution, display, and performance of this technical report in any format, but this permission is only for a period of forty-five (45) days from the most recent time that you verified that this technical report is still available from the Computer Science Department of Rice University under terms that include this permission. All other rights are reserved by the author(s).Technical reportTR00-363