A uniform type structure for secure information flow

Abstract

The π-calculus is a formalism of computing in which we can compositionally represent dynamics of major programming constructs by decomposing them into a single communication primitive, the name passing. This work reports our experience in using a linear/affine typed π-calculus for the analysis and development of type systems of programming languages, focussing on secure information flow analysis. After presenting a basic typed calculus for secrecy, we demonstrate its usage by a sound embedding of the dependency core calculus (DCC) and by the development of a novel type discipline for imperative programs which extends both a secure multi-threaded imperative language by Smith and Volpano and (a call-by-value version of) DCC. In each case, the embedding gives a simple proof of noninterference.