Ed Schouten: “Almost exactly two years ago I started working on a project called CloudABI. In a nutshell, CloudABI is a UNIX-like programming environment for Linux and the BSDs that allows you to easily design sandboxed applications. It accomplishes this by making strong use of capability-based security, inspired by the University of Cambridge’s Capsicum. Compared to traditional UNIX applications, CloudABI applications are better resistent against security vulnerabilities, easier to test and easier to maintain. CloudABI is available as Open Source Software, free of charge. Feel free to watch my talk at 32C3 if you’re interested in all of the nitty-gritty details.
Some time ago I decided to visit the folks at Kumina, as I used to work there until early 2012. That’s why you’ll see my name next to some of the older posts on this blog. During my visit, Tim made me an offer I simply couldn’t refuse: a job at Kumina that allows me to spend a significant amount of time every week to continue the development of CloudABI. As you can see, I’ve accepted the offer. As of last month, I’m a member of the team once again!
What brings me joy is that this step makes the development of CloudABI sustainable. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve already managed to implement at least one large new feature: support for 32-bit hardware architectures. The CloudABI Development Blog now has an article describing the work that was needed to realise this.
At Kumina my job consists of a mixture between systems administration and software development. There are various pieces of software that we’re developing in-house. One of my tasks is to release some of these as Open Source Software, so stay tuned for my next posts!”
Tags: BSD, Capsicum, cloudABI, kumina, Linux, open source, sandboxing, security, software, unix