A type-based approach to program security Conference

Volpano, D, Smith, G. (1997). A type-based approach to program security . Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1214 607-621. 10.1007/bfb0030629

cited authors

  • Volpano, D; Smith, G

abstract

  • This paper presents a type system which guarantees that well-typed programs in a procedural programming language satisfy a noninterference security property. With all program inputs and outputs classified at various security levels, the property basically states that a program output, classified at some level, can never change as a result of modifying only inputs classified at higher levels. Intuitively, this means the program does not "leak" sensitive data. The property is similar to a notion introduced years ago by Goguen and Meseguer to model security in multi-level computer systems. We also give an algorithm for inferring and simplifying principal types, which document the security requirements of programs.

authors

publication date

  • January 1, 1997

published in

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

start page

  • 607

end page

  • 621

volume

  • 1214