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Fri 23 Jun 2017 16:40 - 17:05 at Auditorium, Vertex Building - Security Chair(s): Peter Müller

The principle of least authority states that each component of the system should be given authority to access only the information and resources that it needs for its operation. This principle is fundamental to the secure design of software systems, as it helps to limit an application’s attack surface and to isolate vulnerabilities and faults. Unfortunately, current programming languages do not provide adequate help in controlling the authority of application modules, an issue that is particularly acute in the case of untrusted third-party extensions.

In this paper, we present a language design that facilitates controlling the authority granted to each application module. The key technical novelty of our approach is that modules are first-class, statically typed capabilities. First-class modules are essentially objects, and so we formalize our module system by translation into an object calculus and prove that the core calculus is type-safe and authority-safe. Unlike prior formalizations, our work defines authority non-transitively, allowing engineers to reason about software designs that use wrappers to provide an attenuated version of a more powerful capability.

Our approach allows developers to determine a module’s authority by examining the capabilities passed as module arguments when the module is created, or delegated to the module later during execution. The type system facilitates this by identifying which objects provide capabilities to sensitive resources, and by enabling security architects to examine the capabilities passed into and out of a module based only on the module’s interface, without needing to examine the module’s implementation code. An implementation of the module system and illustrative examples in the Wyvern programming language suggest that our approach can be a practical way to control module authority.

Fri 23 Jun

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

15:50 - 17:05
15:50
25m
Talk
Type Abstraction for Relaxed Noninterference
ECOOP Research Papers
Raimil Cruz University of Chile, Tamara Rezk Inria, Bernard Serpette Inria, Éric Tanter University of Chile
Link to publication Media Attached
16:15
25m
Talk
EvilPickles: DoS attacks based on Object-Graph Engineering
ECOOP Research Papers
Jens Dietrich Massey University, Kamil Jezek University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, CZ, Shawn Rasheed Massey University, Amjed Tahir Massey University, Alex Potanin Victoria University of Wellington
Link to publication Pre-print Media Attached
16:40
25m
Talk
A Capability-Based Module System for Authority Control
ECOOP Research Papers
Darya Melicher Carnegie Mellon University, Yangqingwei Shi Peking University, Alex Potanin Victoria University of Wellington, Jonathan Aldrich Carnegie Mellon University
Link to publication