Probabilistic noninterference in a concurrent language

  • Authors:
  • Dennis Volpano;Geoffrey Smith

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computer Security
  • Year:
  • 1999

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

In previous work (Smith and Volpano, Proceedings 25th Symposiumon Principles of Programming Languages, San Diego, CA, 1998, pp.355-364), we give a type system that guarantees that well-typedmulti-threaded programs are possibilistically noninterfering. Ifthread scheduling is probabilistic, however, then well-typedprograms may have probabilistic timing channels. We describe howthey can be eliminated without making the type system morerestrictive. We show that well-typed concurrent programs areprobabilistically noninterfering if every total command with aguard containing high variables executes atomically. The proof usesthe notion of a probabilistic state of a computation from Kozenswork in the denotational semantics of probabilistic programs(Kozen, Journal of Computer and System Sciences 22 (1981),328-350).^{2}