Computer Security from a Programming Language and Static Analysis Perspective

Computer security [16,5] is usually defined as ensuring integrity, confidentiality, and availability requirements even in the presence of a determined, malicious opponent. Sensitive data must be modified and consulted by authorized users only (integrity, confidentiality); moreover, the system should resist “denial of service” attacks that attempt to render it unusable (availability). In more colorful language, computer security has been described as “programming Satan’s computer” [6]: the implementor must assume that every weakness that can be exploited will be. Security is a property of a complete system, and involves many different topics, both computer-related (hardware, systems, networks, programming, cryptography) and user-related (organizational and social policies and laws). In this talk, we discuss the impact of programming languages and static program analysis on the implementation of access control security policies, with special emphasis on smart cards. By lack of time, we will not discuss other relevant examples of programming language concepts being used for computer security, such as type systems for information flow [42,41,20,2,34,35] and validation of cryptographic protocols using process algebras and types [4,1,3].