Information flow vs. resource access in the asynchronous pi-calculus

  • Authors:
  • Matthew Hennessy;James Riely

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom;DePaul University, Chicago, IL

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
  • Year:
  • 2002

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

We propose an extension of the asynchronous π-calculus in which a variety of security properties may be captured using types. These are an extension of the input/output types for the π-calculus in which I/O capabilities are assigned specific security levels. The main innovation is a uniform typing system that, by varying slightly the allowed set of types, captures different notions of security.We first define a typing system that ensures that processes running at security level σ cannot access resources with a security level higher than σ. The notion of access control guaranteed by this system is formalized in terms of a Type Safety Theorem.We then show that, by restricting the allowed types, our system prohibits implicit information flow from high-level to low-level processes. We prove that low-level behavior can not be influenced by changes to high-level behavior. This is formalized as a noninterference theorem with respect to may testing.