"However, a process that has a process identifier (say ProcessIdentifier) of a process with which it communicates can launch a denial of service attack to kill

"However, a process that has a process identifier (say ProcessIdentifier) of a process with which it communicates can launch a denial of service attack to kill that process" The BEAM does not promise (or provide) secure isolation between processes within a single VM. It's even called out in their bug report policy: https://github.com/erlang/otp/wiki/FAQ:-What-kind-of-patches-will-be-approved%3F#can-i-write-a-patch-to-increase-the-security-of-the-erlang-distribution https://github.com/erlang/otp/wiki/FAQ:-What-kind-of-patches... "An Erlang process does not have a region of mutual exclusion, which can lead to internal conflicts within processes." I don't follow the use of "mutual exclusion" in this statement; the only thing that can write to a process's stack or heap is the process - what kind of "conflicts" do you mean? "For example, in Erlang it is necessary for application programmers to explicitly code a request handler for each re-entry into the region of mutual exclusion" This sentence doesn't help either, because the previous statement was that the processes don't _have_ the region this objects to writing handlers for entering...