Application Whitelists
An emerging approach in combating viruses and malware is to whitelist software which is considered safe to run, blocking all others. The approach was first implemented in a modern operating system by Dr. John Harrison, an American computer scientist. Some deem this superior to the standard signature-based, anti-virus approach of blocking/removing known harmful software (essentially blacklisting), as the standard approach generally means that exploits are already in the wild.
These products may provide administrative control over program whitelists in addition to preventing introduction of new malware.
Among Unix Operating system variants, HP-UX has introduced a feature called "HP-UX Whitelisting" on 11iv3 version. HP-UX Whitelisting (WLI) offers file and system resource protection based on RSA encryption technology. WLI is complementary to the traditional UNIX discretionary access controls (DAC) based on user, group, and file permissions. The more granular DAC access control list (ACL) permissions available on VxFS and HFS file systems are likewise not affected.
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Famous quotes containing the word application:
“If you would be a favourite of your king, address yourself to his weaknesses. An application to his reason will seldom prove very successful.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)