Preventing Process Access to Another Process' Data

What Prevents a Process from Accessing Another Process' Data?

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What prevents a process from accessing another process' data?

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A. B. C. D.

B.

Process isolation is where each process has its own distinct address space for its application code and data.

In this way, it is possible to prevent each process from accessing another process' data.

This prevents data leakage, or modification to the data while it is in memory.

Memory segmentation is a virtual memory management mechanism.

The reference monitor is an abstract machine that mediates all accesses to objects by subjects.

Data hiding, also known as information hiding, is a mechanism that makes information available at one processing level is not available at another level.

Source: HARE, Chris, Security Architecture and Models, Area 6 CISSP Open Study Guide, January 2002.

The correct answer is B. Process isolation.

Process isolation is a fundamental principle of operating systems security that aims to prevent one process from accessing or interfering with another process's data. This isolation is achieved by allocating each process its own virtual address space, which is protected from other processes. This way, each process can only access its own memory and data, and cannot access or modify another process's memory or data.

Memory segmentation (answer A) is a technique used by operating systems to divide memory into segments and allocate each segment to a specific process. This can help with memory management, but it is not specifically designed to prevent one process from accessing another process's data.

The reference monitor (answer C) is a security mechanism that enforces access control policies by mediating all accesses to objects in a system. It is not specifically designed to prevent one process from accessing another process's data, although it can be used to enforce this type of policy.

Data hiding (answer D) is a technique used in programming to prevent certain data or code from being accessed or modified by unauthorized parties. It is not specifically designed to prevent one process from accessing another process's data.

In summary, process isolation is the correct answer because it is a specific technique used by operating systems to prevent one process from accessing another process's data.