Accounting system: a fine-grained CPU resource protection mechanism for embedded system

Abstract

In ubiquitous computing environments, our daily lives will be made convenient by embedded intelligent devices. Those devices, such as car navigation systems, personal digital assistances, and cellular phones, provide various kinds of the complex services. Those devices are networked with each other and provide complicated services, through the Internet. While they provide useful services, there is an increasing possibility of security attacks, which include the unexpected execution of unsecure codes. Current information appliances have not yet fully embodied a resource protection mechanism that prevents misbehaved applications from consuming the whole CPU capacity of system resources. In this paper, we propose accounting system, and describe its design and implementation. The system is a resource monitoring and restriction system that has the purpose of improving the system's reliability and security. We developed the system on Linux. Our system is a very generic to offer various services, such as security improvement, overload control, and class-based accounting, that require CPU resource control