A language for information flow: dynamic tracking in multiple interdependent dimensions

  • Authors:
  • Avraham Shinnar;Marco Pistoia;Anindya Banerjee

  • Affiliations:
  • Harvard University;IBM T. J. Watson Research Center;IMDEA Software

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Fourth Workshop on Programming Languages and Analysis for Security
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

This paper presents λI, a language for dynamic tracking of information flow across multiple, interdependent dimensions of information. Typical dimensions of interest are integrity and confidentiality. λI supports arbitrary domain-specific policies that can be developed independently. λI treats information-flow metadata as a first-class entity and tracks information flow on the metadata itself (integrity on integrity, integrity on confidentiality, etc.). This paper also introduces IMPOLITE, a novel class of information-flow policies for λI. Unlike many systems, which only allow for absolute-security relations, IMPOLITE can model more realistic security policies based on relative-security relations. IMPOLITE demonstrates how policies on interdependent dimensions of information can be simultaneously enforced within λI's unified framework.