Abstract
This project involves developing a Security Sandbox, which is a computer security tool that prohibits an application from making unauthorized system calls. This tool is used in PC2 which is Programming Contest Control System, pronounced “P-C-squared” or sometimes just “P-C-Two” for short. The Security Sandbox limits user submitted programs from accessing restricted system resources in a programming contest. Every semester, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS) conducts a Programming Contest, which allows students from all majors to participate. Every participating student or a team of students have to solve certain questions and come up with a C, C++ or Java program as a solution for each problem. The judges verify the solution, give points accordingly, and choose the winner at the end of contest. PC2 is a software system developed at CSUS. It is used to support smooth flow of programming contests. Every participating team submits their programs to judges. PC2 takes submitted programs and runs them as a separate thread, reporting the execution results to the judges. This project provides a Security Sandbox that can hold and run the team submitted code. The judges give information regarding all system calls that are permitted for each problem of the contest. If the participant’s code tries to access unauthorized resources then the Sandbox will stop the code from execution and further reports it to the judges. The result of this project is a Linux based working prototype, a report on migrating it to other platforms such as Windows and Mac OS and finally deploy the Sandbox for Programming Contests.