CAREER: Language-based Distributed System Security

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CNS-0346939CAREER: Language-based Distributed System SecurityStephan A. ZdancewicDistributed systems are an increasingly crucial part of moderncomputing infrastructure, yet the existing technology for ensuringtheir security and reliability is lacking. This research addressesthe problem of building distributed systems and reasoning about theirsecurity by developing programming languages that provide betterabstractions for describing security policies and communicationprotocols. The starting point for this project is existing work on security-typedlanguages, which protect data confidentiality and integrity. Thisresearch generalizes these information-flow policies to make them moredynamic, enabling them to accommodate the changing environment in whichdistributed systems run. For example, dynamic information-flowpolicies should integrate cleanly with traditional authentication andaccess control mechanisms to provide end-to-end guarantees about dataconfidentiality.The second stage of this project is to develop language technologythat applies dynamic security policies to distributed programs. Theidea for this part of the research is to develop a theoretical basisfor secure distributed computing using existing process calculiaugmented with a heterogeneous trust model and the policy languageoutlined above. In this setting, types describe communicationprotocols, properties of which can be verified statically by thecompiler. The result will be a programming language with a sound typesystem that aids the programmer in writing correct, security-criticaldistributed programs.