Computer Laboratory

Capsicum: practical capabilities for UNIX

logo Capsicum - Publications, talks, and documentation

Capsicum is an experimental and rapidly evolving system, so documentation on how to use and develop it continues to be a work in progress. Here you can find some of our papers/articles, talks, blog posts, tech news articles, and formal programmer documentation.

Papers, articles, and technical reports

Talks

Blog posts

  • Watson, R. N. M. 2013 Capsicum year in review. Light Blue Touchpaper, 20 December, 2013. Robert Watson reviews Capsicum events from 2013: work funded by the FreeBSD Foundation and Google on FreeBSD 10.0, Casper in FreeBSD 11, David Drysdale's port of Capsicum to Linux at Google, Summer of Code students, joint work with the University of Wisconsin on Capsicum, and future funded Capsicum work.
  • Maste, E. FreeBSD Foundation announces Capsicum integration project completion. FreeBSD Foundation Blog, 17 December, 2013. Ed Maste, FreeBSD Foundation technical project director, describes the recently completed Capsicum integration effort, as well as the Casper daemon.
  • Laurie, B. Open Source Security. Google Open Source Program Office Blog, 12 Septemnber, 2013. Ben Laurie describes some of the open-source security projects supported by Google developers and open-source programs office funding, including Capsicum.
  • Goodkin, D. New Funded Project: Capsicum Improvements. FreeBSD Foundation Blog, 18 June, 2012. Deb Goodkin announces new Capsicum development jointly funded by the FreeBSD Foundation and Google. Pawel Jakub Dawidek will develop a new libcapsicum and further Capsicum-based applications.
  • Laurie, B. Using Capsicum For Sandboxing. Links, 28 April, 2012. Ben Laurie explores Capsicumising bzip2, and more generally, the process of application compartmentalisaion.
  • Watson, R. N. M. Three-paper Thursday: capability systems. Light Blue Touch Paper, 23 February, 2012. Three papers on capability systems that influenced our thinking for Capsicum and CHERI.
  • Watson, R. N. M. FreeBSD 9.0 ships with experimental Capsicum support. Light Blue Touch Paper, 30 January, 2012. Capsicum is highlighted in the FreeBSD 9.0 release announcement and FreeBSD Foundation press release.
  • Laurie, B. Capsicum Wins Cambridge Ring Award. Links, 9 March, 2011. Ben Laurie announces that Capsicum has won the Cambridge Ring best publication award for 2010.
  • Seaborn, M. An introduction to FreeBSD-Capsicum. Lacking Rhoticity, 4 November, 2010. Mark Seaborn introduces Capsicum's high-level feature set, and considers how it might provide a better platform for his work on PLASH.
  • Seaborn, M. Process descriptors in FreeBSD-Capsicum. Lacking Rhoticity, 23 October, 2010. Mark Seaborn talks about process descriptors as a replacement for PIDs in UNIX and Linux.
  • Laurie, B. FreeBSD Capsicum. Links, 14 August, 2010. Ben Laurie discusses our Capsicum work.
  • Watson, R. N. M. Capsicum: practical capabilities for UNIX. Light Blue Touch Paper, 12 August, 2010. Capsicum is presented at the 19th USENIX Security Symposium, winning Best Student Paper award.
  • Laurie, B. Capability Operating Systems. Links, 27 March, 2010. Ben Laurie puts our on-going work on Capsicum into context with a review of recent and historic capability system designs.

Tech news articles

Documentation