Patent ID: 8819836

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of limiting exploitable or potentially exploitable applications in an operating system such that administrative or maintenance functions of the operating system are no longer available to be exploited or potentially exploited, the method being implemented by a computer system that includes one or more physical processors programmed with one or more computer program instructions which, when executed, perform the method, the method comprising: identifying, by the computer system, at least a first operating system for which an administrative or maintenance function provided by a first application is to be disabled, wherein the administrative or maintenance function is used by a user having system administrator privileges to administer or maintain the first operating system but is exploitable or potentially exploitable by others to compromise the first operating system; identifying, by the computer system, the first application; disabling, by the computer system, the first application such that the administrative or maintenance function provided by the first application will not be available via the first operating system when the first operating system is executed; and executing, by the computer system, the first operating system when the first application is disabled such that the administrative or maintenance function provided by the first application is not available to administer or maintain the first operating system and is not exploitable or potentially exploitable to compromise the first operating system, wherein, after the first application is disabled and before the execution of the first operating system, the first operating system is placed in a component repository by a component creation subsystem in a component creation environment that is separate from the component repository, wherein the component creation subsystem does not have read access to the component repository, wherein the component creation subsystem and the component repository are not accessible from a runtime environment in which the first operating system is executed such that the component creation subsystem and the component repository cannot be compromised from the runtime environment, wherein the first operating system is obtained from the component repository by a component manager subsystem to be executed in the runtime environment, and wherein the component manager subsystem does not have write access to the component repository.