A Secure Networked Laboratory for Kernel Programming ( Extended Abstract )

Recently, several flavors of Unix have appeared which run on inexpensive personal computers. Further, the source code for these operating systems is freely available. This makes offering courses that include realistic kernel programming feasible in an academic environment. However, root access is required in order to modify a system's kernel. This poses a potential security threat both to other systems on the network and to other users of a single machine. This paper presents a lab design which securely integrates machines with untrusted users acting as root into a secured network, and which securely allows multiple users root access to the same machine.