Capability-based addressing

In computer science, capability-based addressing is a scheme used by some computers to control access to memory as an efficient implementation of capability-based security. Under a capability-based addressing scheme, pointers are replaced by protected objects which specify both a location in memory, along with access rights which define the set of operations which can be carried out on the memory location. Capabilities can only be created or modified through the use of privileged instructions which may be executed only by either the kernel or some other privileged process authorised to do so. Thus, a kernel can limit application code and other subsystems access to the minimum necessary portions of memory, without the need to use separate address spaces and therefore require a context switch when an access occurs.

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