Enforcing Robust Declassification

  • Authors:
  • Andrew C. Myers;Andrei Sabelfeld;Steve Zdancewic

  • Affiliations:
  • Cornell University;Chalmers University of Technology;University of Pennsylvania

  • Venue:
  • CSFW '04 Proceedings of the 17th IEEE workshop on Computer Security Foundations
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Noninterference requires that there is no informationflow from sensitive to public data in a given system. However,many systems perform intentional release of sensitiveinformation as part of their correct functioning and thereforeviolate noninterference. To control information flowwhile permitting intentional information release, some systemshave a downgrading or declassification mechanism.A major danger of such a mechanism is that it may causeunintentional information release. This paper shows that arobustness property can be used to characterize programsin which declassification mechanisms cannot be exploitedby attackers to release more information than intended. Itdescribes a simple way to provably enforce this robustnessproperty through a type-based compile-time program analysis.The paper also presents a generalization of robustnessthat supports upgrading (endorsing) data integrity.