I-JVM: a Java virtual machine for component isolation in OSGi

The OSGi framework is a Java-based, centralized, com-ponent oriented platform. It is being widely adopted as an execution environment for the development of extensible ap-plications. However, current Java Virtual Machines are un-able to isolate components from each other. For instance, a malicious component can freeze the complete platform by allocating too much memory or alter the behavior of other components by modifying shared variables. This paper presents I-JVM, a Java Virtual Machine that provides a lightweight approach to isolation while preserv-ing compatibility with legacy OSGi applications. Our eval-uation of I-JVM shows that it solves the 8 known OSGi vul-nerabilities that are due to the Java Virtual Machine and that the overhead of I-JVM compared to the JVM on which it is based is below 20%. 1