Re: Part 2: System Structure

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Mon, 2006-05-22 at 15:56 +0200, Tom Bachmann wrote:
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> Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> >   The program can check the type of its bank, and possibly decline
> >   to run.
> > 
> 
> Just a minor detail, but I believe it cannot. Because if it runs on a
> transparent bank, the test could have been forged.

I do not believe so. The transparency of the bank is completely
orthogonal to whether the bank can be authenticated as a particular type
of bank.

Unfortunately, in removing the constructor, Hurd-NG lost authentication
(at least in the current form) and with it any means to perform this
type of test.

Note that authenticating implementations is important for certain kinds
of integrity dependencies -- not just for this purpose.


shap