Investigating Kernel Security In Functional Operating Systems

System security has always been concerned with software vulnerabilities especially in privileged applications like web browsers and kernels.Hardware and architecture security are relatively new developments due to recently publicized vulnerabilities(Spectre,Meltdown,Foreshadow).A cursory glance at list of current of CVEs exhibits a myriad of C related issues(buffer overflows,memory corruption etc.)yet operating systems and bare-metal development continue to be dominated by C and assembly.Functional programming is often touted as the paradigm shift to reduce and possibly eliminate many of the issues in traditional,imperative style development.However,the functional paradigm is almost never found below the application level.A few operating systems have been designed and implemented in the functional paradigms.These systems are usually attempts to prove the viability of usable systems built with functional and high-level concepts.The security aspect is often ignored or relegated to off-hand remarks.This work explores the darker side of kernel implementations: security of kernel components and the techniques available to kernel developers when functional concepts are available at bare metal.